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St. Louis luxury realtor fired after barring black man from his own home
A video of the incident had been shared more than 161,000 times on Facebook by Friday
A St. Louis-based luxury apartment brokerage fired one of its employees after she was recorded physically blocking a black man from entering his building and demanding proof that he lived there.
D’Arreion Toles, listed as a CEO of the marketing firm Global Wealth Insights, posted a video to Facebook on Saturday showing a woman identified as Hilary Brooke Thornton following him into the Elder Shirt Lofts apartment building in Downtown St. Louis and standing in the doorway after he tried to enter the lobby, according to the Daily Mail.
“I’m uncomfortable,” Thornton tells Toles in the video, holding up her hand when Toles tries to talk through the doorway.
Tolls answers, “OK, you can be uncomfortable. That’s your discretion. You’re uncomfortable because of you. I need you to move out of my way.”
Tolls, whose Facebook profile says he’s from Chicago, eventually walked through and got home to his apartment, but the police knocked on his door about 30 minutes later, he later posted.
As of Friday, the video had been shared more than 161,000 times.
A spokesperson for Tribeca Luxury Apartments, which employed Thornton but does not manage the apartment building, said it was “disturbed” by the video and fired her.
Earlier this year, MySpace NYC fired Brooklyn real estate agent Chris Giardina after he was recorded yelling racial slurs outside a bar. [Daily Mail] — Alex Nitkin