Charges have been filed against a Michigan man who police believe is seen in a viral video attacking a Macy’s employee.
Damire Palmer, 18, has been charged with assault to do great bodily harm less than murder during an alleged attack in a Michigan Macy’s two weeks ago, according to ABC 12 News.
This African American man beat a white employee of a Macy’s.
Security footage shows the attack was unprovoked.
Watch the video and tell me this shouldn’t be investigated as a hate crime.
— HARLAN Z. HILL ?? (@Harlan) June 20, 2020
“This was an unprovoked attack,” Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said. “The internal video for Macy’s shows the suspect approaching from behind the victim. The store manager appears unaware that he’s even there.”
A short video clip shows a black man beating a white Macy’s employee and calling him the N-word while the employee apologizes and tries to get away. The man who posted the original video, a rapper named FT Quay, claimed that the altercation started because the store manager called the customer the N-word.
“He’s shook up, and he’s emotionally upset, as well as physically upset,” Leyton said about the Macy’s employee. “But he’s emotionally upset to think that, you know, anybody would think he said the alleged vile, racial, provoking slur; because he says he didn’t say it, and his history suggests he didn’t say it.”
Leyton added that the two did briefly speak before the attack, but the customer simply asked the manager if a jacket fit, to which the manager responded it did not.
“Even if there were verbal provocation, which we have no evidence of, violent retaliation is not permitted by the law,” Leyton said.
Palmer faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the New York Post.
