Hampton Inn worker calls police on Black guests at hotel pool in NC, video shows
A Black woman and her children were swimming at a hotel pool in North Carolina where they were guests when an employee called the police on them, video shared on social media shows.
Now the employee has been fired and the hotel chain is apologizing.
“Hampton by Hilton has zero tolerance for racism and discrimination of any kind,” Shruti Gandhi Buckley, global head of Hampton by Hilton, said in an Instagram post Monday.
The post also said the worker who called the police was “no longer employed.”
A woman identified by her social media accounts as Anita Williams Wright was using the pool with her family at a Hampton Inn in Williamston — about 40 minutes north of Greenville near the coast of North Carolina — when she said an employee approached asking for proof they were guests.
“It was two white people sitting over there. She said nothing to them,” Wright said in a Facebook live video posted June 26. “She said to me, ‘Oh because it’s always people like you using the pool unauthorized.’ Who’s people like me?”
The officers and the employee are then heard asking for proof she has a room at the hotel. When Wright showed them a hotel key card, the employee asked her what room they were staying in.
“Why do I have to tell you what room I’m in?” Wright responds in the video. “What did I do wrong? This lady here is discriminating (against) me.”
In the video, police and the hotel employee are heard asking for Wright’s name. She declined to give it, saying she didn’t break the law. The video then shows an officer running her car’s license plate.
“I’m here on business with my kids in the pool,” Wright said in the video.
About seven minutes after she started filming, Wright ushered her children out of the pool.
“You’re degrading me like this in front of my kids,” she says to the officers beforehand.
The video ends with Wright and her two children entering an elevator to return to their room. It’s since been viewed more than 900,000 times on Facebook and close to 6,000 times on Instagram. Wright captioned the Instagram video “I can’t believe this happened to me and my kids.”
Hampton by Hilton was made aware of the incident on Saturday and reached out to local management on Sunday, according to Buckley’s Instagram post.
“We have apologized directly to the guest and her family for their experience, and will work with them and the hotel to make this right,” the post states. “We remain in contact with the hotel’s ownership about follow-up actions, and to ensure that in the future, their employees reflect the best values of our brand and are welcoming of all.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 1:04 PM with the headline "Hampton Inn worker calls police on Black guests at hotel pool in NC, video shows."
