Photo: Jodi Jacobson/Getty Images
“I haven’t taken one thing,” Veleda Spellman said in a viral TikTok video, after a jewelry store cashier accused her of stealing. “Everybody Black don’t steal,” she said later in the video.
Spellman was accused of stealing from Final Touch Jewelry in NYC and forced to empty her purse to prove she hadn’t taken any items. She told the Daily Dot that the cashier said he wanted to “see what was in her bag” after he alleges to have seen her taking items.
“Being accused of stealing because you are black is heart Wrenching,” Spellman wrote in the caption of the video which already has over 341,000 views since it was posted Tuesday (July 20).
Spellman is the founder and CEO of Positive Queens, a women’s empowerment network, and was shopping for gift bag items at the store when she was accused of stealing.
“These items are going in gift baskets for women who are going through something,” Spellman said in the video. She told the outlet that she felt targeted by the cashier because she’s Black.
“There were other people of other nationalities in his store,” she said. “I was targeted just about the moment I walked in the door.” Spellman said she has no plans to return to the store or continue to shop there after the cashier “publicly embarrassed” her.
“With what we just went through with COVID, we’ve [got to] be a little bit kinder to one another,” Spellman told the outlet. “But that wasn’t the case for me in the store that day.”
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