The guest broadcast the incident live on social media.
5 min read
A Hampton Inn employee was fired after he called police for a black family who were staying at the hotel and using the pool.
A representative for Hilton, the owner of the Hampton Inn, said the unidentified white employee at his Williamston, North Carolina location was no longer working there after a guest, Anita Williams-Wright, broadcast the incident live on Friday. . Williams-Wright was in the hotel pool with her children when the employee and two officers approached her on suspicion that they were not invited.
“I have a key to get in and I can show them it works,” Williams-Wright tells officers in the nearly 10-minute video posted on her Facebook page. “I have a room here.”
Williams-Wright did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the police report, the two officers arrived at the hotel reception and spoke to an employee who said she was making rounds and “found two children playing alone in the pool.” She spoke to the children, who said their mother, Williams-Wright, was watching them from a nearby car.
The employee is seen in the video explaining to Williams-Wright that she wanted to make sure everyone in the pool was invited, however the mother claimed that there were white guests that were in the pool at the same time and they weren’t asked to validate your stay.
“She said to me, ‘Oh, because there are always people like you who use the pool without authorization.’ WHO [are] People like me? “Williams-Wright said in the video.
The responding lieutenant asked the employee what she wanted to do, in which she was quoted as reading from her phone that “her manager wanted them to arrest people,” according to the police report. This line cannot be heard in the video.
Williams-Wright declined to provide officers with identification other than the key to her room, saying she did not commit any crime, but officers are seen in the video checking her license plate. The video ends with her and her family leaving the pool and returning to her room.
Police went to the front desk after obtaining the Williams-Wright name from their license plate and found that he had two rooms reserved at the hotel, according to the police report.
“The Williamston Police Department takes the complaint process very seriously and has launched an internal investigation into our response to this service call,” the department said in a statement. “Our office will conduct a full and thorough internal investigation. We appreciate the public’s concern and efforts to inform us of this incident.”
The department also said in releasing the police report Tuesday that the status of the case was categorized as “unfounded.”
Shruti Gandhi Buckley, global head of Hampton by Hilton, said in a statement that company administrators were alerted to the video and the incident over the weekend and when they contacted Williamston managers on Sunday, they learned that the employee in the video was no longer working. there.
He added that Hilton contacted Williams-Wright, apologized to her and her family and is working “to do this well.”
“We remain in contact with hotel property about follow-up actions and to ensure that, in future, its employees reflect the best values of our brand and are welcoming to everyone,” Gandhi Buckley said in a statement.
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