A hotel manager was given the pink slip by his job for a heated exchange with four students at Florida A&M University.
Four FAMU students — three of whom are black — were at a downtown Tallahassee apartment complex to visit a friend when Don Crandall denied them entry into the elevator, Buzzfeed reports. Crandall told the students that the elevator was his and assumed that they don’t live or know anyone in the apartment complex.
In the video one of the students captured, Crandall can be heard saying, “You don’t belong in this building,” and then proceeded to say, “You think I’m f**ing kidding?” Not long after, he pulled out his gun on the students which led to one of them saying, “Sir, you bringing out your gun, what is your purpose for that?”
These are the kind of people that are burning Nike products , we are sick of the discrimination 🗣 never thought I’d have a personal experience with racism like this, this man pulled a gun on us because we were walking up to my friends apartment w/o a key pic.twitter.com/TlMFQjoM1N
— zay❕ (@_IsaiahNoThomas) September 8, 2018
To protect themselves, the students stepped away. Eventually, their friend Zayvion Flowers, who resides at the Stadium Centre, came down and escorted his friends to his apartment after the wild encounter. The footage was posted to one of the victims’ Twitter page and has since gone viral, reminding the country that racial profiling is still a significant problem.
The local authorities notified Pax Hotel Group, that owns Baymont Inn & Suites Tallahassee Central, about the situation.
The company has since terminated Crandall and released a Facebook statement apologizing on behalf of their former employee’s actions with the promise to uphold their core values.
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