Food Lion customer’s racist tirade caught on video in NC. Now he’s in jail
A 41 year-old man in North Carolina has been arrested after a viral video showed him yelling racial slurs at a Black employee in Food Lion, police said.
The nearly three-minute-long video containing graphic language has been viewed more than 200,000 times on Facebook.
Eric Shane Cahoon was arrested Monday and charged with ethnic intimidation, communicating threats, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, second-degree trespassing and assault causing physical injury, according to arrest records with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.
Chief Joel C. Acciardo of the Hope Mills Police Department confirmed with McClatchy News that Cahoon is “the aggressor in the video,” which was posted on Facebook shortly after 4 p.m. on July 23.
In the video, Cahoon is seen wearing a black backpack with an American flag bandanna around his head as he repeatedly calls a Black employee at a Food Lion in Hope Mills the n-word, telling him to “man up” and “go ahead and touch me” as the employee instructs Cahoon to leave the store.
“Don’t touch him, baby, please don’t touch him,” the woman filming is heard saying about the employee.
At least two white workers tried to intervene, and a Black woman later ran her cart between Cahoon and the employee, raising her arm to protect him, the video shows.
But Cahoon continued to berate the employee into the frozen foods section until a manager can be heard instructing the employee to go to the back.
Cahoon then yelled “f--- you” and something to the effect of “talking about a mask, that’s what I thought,” before storming out of the store, the video shows.
Acciardo told McClatchy that officers arrived at the Food Lion within four minutes of dispatch notifying police.
“I do not think I can add anything more as to what happened that is not already depicted in the video,” he said.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 5:46 PM with the headline "Food Lion customer’s racist tirade caught on video in NC. Now he’s in jail."
