A Mississippi man has been fired from his job at a hospital following a viral video of him cursing at a donut shop employee and calling her the N-word.
The video shows Kyle Thomas, a radiology technician, in his scrubs at the Donut Palace. He appears to be arguing with a man off-camera at the start, but quickly turns his focus when the woman recording the video says, “I hope you don’t deal with children.” According to WJTV, the woman is Keaundrea Wardlaw, a Donut Palace employee.
Thomas says, “Shut your fucking mouth.” The two go back and forth for a bit until he goes to leave and yells at Wardlaw, “You’re a n*****. You’re a n*****, shut up.” Thomas and Wardlaw continue to argue as he exits the store, and he calls her the N-word twice more.
The video quickly spread after activists uploaded it to various platforms. Writer and activist Sean King’s Facebook post of the video has over 10,000 shares and 600,000 views.
https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/videos/1943615802343995/
Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, Thomas’ place of employment at the time, responded quickly to the video by firing him. A hospital spokesperson issued a statement to WJTV about the situation:
“We are aware of the confrontation captured on video involving one of our off duty employees at a local donut shop. We take this situation very seriously. This employee’s language and behavior does not represent our organization’s values and his employment has been terminated. We want our patients, employees, physicians and our community to know that we find the language used in the video to be completely unacceptable and inconsistent with what we expect from employees or anyone associated with our organization. We are committed to a work environment that is inclusive and where everyone is respected and valued.”
Thomas reportedly returned to Donut Palace to apologize to the manager for making a scene but did not apologize to Wardlaw. Before deleting his Facebook, he wrote, “I regret every word that I said there is no excuse to every [sic] say these horrible things. I only hope that by me sharing a public apology in this incident you could show me some grace. I was upset about another issue and it spilled over into this and I can’t apologize enough.”
H/T the Root