WARNING | This story contains a graphic image showing an injury.
Police are investigating after a Winnipeg grocery store supervisor allegedly punched a woman accused of shoplifting on Sunday, in what one eyewitness believes is a case of racial profiling.
Angela Antoine says she went into the Foodfare grocery store on Portage Avenue at Arlington Street shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday. As she was getting ready to check out, she says a store supervisor accused another woman of stealing food, demanding she take it out of her purse.
The woman accused of stealing — who later told Antoine she is First Nations and was shopping with her seven-year-old son — held her purse tight and told the employee she didn’t have any food inside, according to Antoine.
“He grabbed her bag, and she’s refusing to give it up, and that’s when he just wound up and punched her,” she said.
“I just couldn’t believe what I was looking at.”
The woman fell to the ground before other employees stepped in to separate the two, Antoine said.
The supervisor accused the woman of hitting him first, but Antoine says she didn’t see that happen.
Police showed up soon after to take statements from the woman, employees and witnesses, Antoine said.
She drove the woman and her son home and has been keeping in touch with her.
CBC got in touch with the woman through Antoine, but she declined an interview.
“She’s pretty shook — her little boy too,” Antoine said.
Supervisor suspended
Antoine believes the woman was racially profiled, and thinks the Foodfare supervisor deserves to be fired and charged with assault.
“He punched her out and her lip was split open pretty bad.… There was blood on the floor and that little boy was crying,” she said.
“The little boy saw his mother, like the person that’s supposed to protect him, get knocked out by some guy. I can’t imagine what that little boy’s thinking.”
Antoine took a photo of the woman’s injuries before driving her home.
In a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday, Foodfare owner Munther Zeid says the employee accused of punching the woman has been suspended as an investigation takes place.
“While we acknowledge the gravity of the situation, the employee involved is also from a marginalized community who has experienced many challenges in their life, and we believe that firing this employee is not the right course of action at this stage,” the statement says.
“Instead, we view this incident as an opportunity for education, growth and repair.”
Foodfare, a local chain of five grocery stores, is co-operating with a police investigation and is also seeking partnerships with Indigenous organizations to offer cross-cultural training and prevent similar incidents in the future, Zeid said in the statement.
He declined an interview with CBC on Wednesday.
Winnipeg Police Service Const. Dani McKinnon confirmed that officers were called to the Foodfare store about an assault, but said no arrests have been made and an investigation is still ongoing.
AMC calls for apology
Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Cathy Merrick says the incident is “not acceptable,” and the organization has since cut its ties with Foodfare.
In a Tuesday statement, AMC said security footage showed “a distressing sequence of events” involving the “violent physical assault of a First Nations woman.”
AMC provided food orders through Foodfare and vouchers for the stores to its clients who access assistance under Jordan’s Principle — a federal policy that ensures First Nations kids can swiftly access essential products and services, Merrick said.
“Our relationship, at this point in time, is disconnected until hopefully … we can rectify and be able to get an apology to the family, to the woman, to the child and to the people that go there,” she told reporters Wednesday.
AMC also cut ties with Winnipeg’s Marlborough Hotel earlier this year, after a video widely circulated on social media showed a woman with her hands bound behind her back repeatedly trying to leave the hotel’s lobby, while several men prevented her from doing so.
The Marlborough, which also provided services to some of AMC’s clients through Jordan’s Principle, has not reached out to the organization since, Merrick said.
“I take it as that there’s no … ways to better that relationship.”
Cultural sensitivity training is needed “anywhere and everywhere” that First Nations people are served, said Merrick.
“We need to be able to ensure that our people get the proper services from anywhere they go … in the city [and] this province, that they be treated the same as anybody else.”