Excerpt From: News & Observer. Written By: Karen Garloch.
Shelly Young, a sales person at Missha Beauty supply store, stood near the door Monday offering customers a cheery “Welcome to Missha” and alternately admonishing an outside protester with a stern lecture: “You are banned from these premises.”
As she explained to a reporter: “No one’s allowed to come and harass our customers.”
Young and her fellow Missha employees said they’ve received threats over the phone and in person since Thursday when the manager of the west Charlotte beauty supply store, Sung Ho Lim, attacked a would-be shoplifter.
Over the weekend, the incident flared into a racial protest when African American community leaders and some customers showed up at the store and called for a boycott. This came after cellphone video showed Lim, an Asian man, kicking and choking the accused shoplifter, a black woman.
NAACP President Corine Mack said Monday she met with Lim, who “admitted that he did assault the woman. We have it on tape.…This young lady was the victim. Even if she had stolen a $3.99 pack of eyelashes, the physical assault she had to endure was not the way to handle that.”
Lim, who employees said no longer works at the Wilkinson Boulevard store, filed a report with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department alleging “strong-arm robbery” by a woman, about 25 and wearing a pink hoodie. The report says that, when the woman attempted to leave the store, Lim blocked the exit and asked her to show him what was in her bag. The report says the woman refused “and a struggle ensued” before she fled in a silver Dodge sedan.
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