Walmart has been ordered to pay $4.4 million to Michael Mangum, who filed a lawsuit against the supermarket chain last year after an employee racially profiled him.
Mangum, who is Black, sued Walmart after he alleged he was followed by a security worker in a Wood Village, Oregon store, per CBS News. In court documents, Mangum said he went to the Walmart location to purchase a light bulb for his refrigerator, but noticed security worker Joe Williams following him around the store. He then confronted the worker, who threatened to call the police if he did not leave. When he refused to leave the premises, Williams allegedly said he would tell authorities that Mangum threatened him with violence.
"His jobs would have been at great risk had he been charged with a crime, but he refused to be intimidated by Williams' lies and bullying," said Mangum's attorney Gregory Kafoury in a statement. Mangum works for a housing project in Portland, and also serves as an at-risk youth counselor. Williams, meanwhile, no longer works for Walmart according to company spokesman Randy Hargrove, who called the settlement “excessive.”
"Mr. Mangum was never stopped by Walmart's Asset Protection," Hargrove claimed. "He interfered with our associates as they were surveilling and then stopped confirmed shoplifters, and then refused to leave despite being asked to repeatedly by our staff and Multnomah County deputies." The incident happened on March 26, 2020, and Williams remained employed there until he was fired in July 2020 for the “mishandling [of] $35 of Walmart property.”
