How can we fire an employee that is probable cause?
Iowa Jul 26, 2026
So I need help figuring out how to fire a employee without it coming back to bite us in the butt for something such as wrongful termination. A bit of a background we run a small family owned business in a small rural town. And recently one of our new employees that we hired in the early spring has recently done something that we don't want to be linked too. We need to fire him before this gets more out of hand and we don't want our reputation caught in his crossfire for his wrong doings. Now I'm going to explain the best I can of our situation without revealing too much detail as I don't want this linked back to us and for the sake of privacy to the victim. Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence A few weeks ago my father/boss got a call from this employee about not being able to make into work due to being detained for getting in a spat with his girlfriend. He first claimed things got heated and she shoved him and then shoved her back. When he came back and I was on shift with him. He told me he was breaking up with her and she got violent and he defended himself and she started to spread lies to the police. Started to cry and everything. In the beginning we weren't happy with what he did but thought if it was self defense then we move on. But his story started to change when he started talking to the other employees we have on site. And they reported back to us about what he says and it gets worse and worse every time. He hurt this girl bad and we want nothing to do with his behavior nor be linked to him in any way. None of our employees want to work with him but know we are trying to find a way to fire him without him saying we terminated him without just cause so they tolerate his presence for our sake. And it helps that we have been sending him on a lot of solo work to keep him away from the others. And now this poor girls story has been posted in the local papers, its awful and heartbreaking and were just sick at what he's done. We were going to wait and see if he would go to jail so we we have just cause but we don't really want to wait now that it's in the local papers and we now know how far he went. My dad is just fuming that he lied to his face and hurt that girl as he thinks about if that was me in her situation just makes him sick and he's beating himself up for hiring a monster on his crew and letting such a slimy bastard work with me for so long. So I ask the lawyers and HR of reddit how do we fire an employee with probable cause? Location: Iowa Edit: I'll discuss it with my father about our next course of action. We'll most likely use the "at will" for our state but still talk about firing over creating a hostile work environment if we need an actual reason. I'm sure our employees who have complained won't have a problem with writing statements on their interactions with him. This is territory we never faced before. The only time we had to fire someone was a teenager who didn't show up for their schedule shifts. Every other employee just gave two weeks notice and we bid them good luck and farewells. So thanks for the advice. I might delete this post and profile in a few days. Depends if I need more guidance on this situation but for now it's farewell.
