Woman Faces Lifetime Ban From Kentucky Mall After Hateful Rant Against Latinas

Carla Herreria
Updated
(Photo: YouTube)
(Photo: YouTube)

A woman faces a lifetime ban from a Louisville, Kentucky, mall after her xenophobic rant against two Latinas went viral Tuesday.

The woman became upset while in line at the cash register of a JCPenney in the Jefferson Mall after the two Latinas in front of her added a few last-minute items to their purchase, according to Renee Buckner, who witnessed the woman’s outburst and posted it to Facebook.

“I had to get back on FB, to expose this racism in America/Louisville,” Buckner wrote on a Facebook post that has since been deleted. “This lady went off!”

After the video made its rounds on the internet, gaining more than 6 million views in one day, Jefferson Mall officials publicly decried the woman’s anti-immigrant outburst Wednesday and announced that they were working to identify the woman and ban her from the mall, ABC news affiliate WHAS11 reported.

JCPenney’s corporate office published a similar statement Wednesday, seeking the public’s help in finding the victims so they can issue them a formal apology and a full reimbursement on their purchases, according to NBC news affiliate WAVE3.

Buckner’s post and video was removed from Facebook on Wednesday evening, but a copy of the woman’s tirade remains on YouTube.

As seen in the video above, the woman tells the customers to “go back to wherever the fuck you come from, lady.” When the cashier tells the woman to watch her language, she yells at him to “tell them to go back to where they belong.”

“They come here to live, then act like everybody else,” the woman continues to yell. “You’re a nobodies. Just because you come from another country, it don’t make you nobody. You’re nobody, as far as I’m concerned. You’re probably on welfare. The taxpayers probably paid for all that stuff.”

“It’s true,” the woman tells the other customers waiting in line. “We probably pay for every bit of that stuff. You know that. Probably all the food they get and everything else. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel.”

The video ends after the woman tells the two customers to “speak English. You’re in America. If you don’t know it, learn it.”

After seeing the video, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer went on Twitter to express his disappointment and regret after seeing the video.

“This is not who we are, and on behalf of our community, I apologize to the two women who were treated in such a horrible way,” Fischer wrote Wednesday in a series of tweets. “As a country of immigrants, we must understand we only move forward through peace, acceptance and embracing those who are different from us.”

Fischer also included advice from Bryan Warren, director of the city’s Office for Globalization, on how citizens can be allies to victims of hateful abuse and attacks.

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