ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
A weekend incident involving three young black shoppers at the Foot Locker shoe store at Valley View Mall has led one of the customers and the mall security director to accuse each other of criminal conduct and the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to call for a boycott of the entire mall.
Robert Manns, 25, said at a news conference outside his home in Northwest Roanoke on Tuesday that he was shoved without provocation by mall security chief John Rutledge Saturday and ordered to leave the mall after a shoe store employee objected to talk of an earlier incident in the store.
"We are no longer going to Valley View Mall," Manns' mother, Jeanette Manns, a vice president of the SCLC, announced of her organization. "Every time our young people go in there, they are harassed by mall security. We will not shop at the Valley View Mall until they respect us as shoppers."
Mike Sullivan, since Monday the mall's acting manager, denied that the incident happened the way Robert Manns and two of his male friends described it.
"Are they maintaining that they were calm, cool and collected all the way? I would love to tell you our side of the story, because it's worlds apart from that," he said.
But he said he cannot give the mall's side because Manns has an attorney and the matter is bound for court. Manns swore out a warrant Saturday accusing Rutledge of assault and battery.
"Court is where our side will come out," Sullivan said.
A clerk at Foot Locker also declined to comment.
Monday, Rutledge turned around and charged Robert Manns with trespassing and abusive language. Hearings on both cases are set for June18.
Sullivan said the SCLC was acting "without getting the full story. The shopping center does not - and I say this with authority - does not treat any of our patrons differently than it does any other of our patrons."
Sullivan, whose regular job is director of management services for Faison Associates, the Charlotte, N.C., company that manages Valley View, arrived here Monday to fill in after the recent departure of mall manager Mike Thornton. Sullivan said he wants to talk with the SCLC.
"It's unfortunate that they've chosen to call everybody but us," he said.
Robert Manns said the confrontation began in the shoe store Saturday when his friend Kim Hancock started talking about how he had seen a store employee heave a box of shoes at a young black child and her mother last winter. Manns, Hancock and another one of their friends, Jerome Brown, said the store worker then asked them to leave.
Manns said the worker falsely accused him of spitting at him. Soon, the three men said, several security guards and a police officer escorted them out of the mall.
"We never touched anybody," Manns said.
The young men and SCLC officials said mall guards long have treated black customers more rudely than they do white customers.
Six years ago, the Roanoke branch of the NAACP accused mall guards of targeting black youths and adults when they dispersed crowds. Mall officials complained that teen-agers often blocked store and mall entrances and impeded foot traffic. Two teen-agers recently had been arrested after a fight in the mall and the firing of shots in the parking lot.
The NAACP and mall management at the time met privately and worked out a plan to improve racial relations. The NAACP branch's current president, the Rev. Charles Green, said the only complaint he had heard since then was from white girls who were barred from the mall.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN/Staff. 1. Robert Manns speaks withby CNBreporters outside his home Tuesday evening. Manns claims that a
security guard at Valley View Mall shoved him during an incident
outside of Foot Locker. 2. Jeanette Manns (left), a vice president
of the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, speaks during a news conference outside her home Tuesday
evening.