While an employee of Dillard's Department Stores, located in the Palm Beach Lakes Mall in West Palm Beach FL, I was physically accosted and manhandled by a member of the Loss Prevention department after being erroneously and falsely accused of stealing.

Upon assisting a elderly customer by carrying a very large box of housewares to his car he'd just purchased, a white male security named Thomas came running out of the store and physically attacked and verbally insulted myself and the hapless customer in a botched effort to apprehend us and repossess paid merchandise. I was working on the clock during this horrifying incident and based on another security gaurd's own statements, I had been under scrutiny since the day I started working and they assumed that because I was a young black man I was predisposed to steal something sooner or later. As Thomas, the rogue security guard put it, "We finally got you, we've had our eyes on you from day one." The store's manager, Eileen Ruggieo, later criticized, chastised, and lambasted me for helping a customer carry merchandise out of the store and that I bought the physical attack and apprehension by the security guard on myself for going above and beyond my job duties. Eileen Ruggieo (561) 478-7789, then fired me under the store rule that no employee is to leave the premises while actively on-the-clock. There is an old axiom that says, "No good deed goes unrewarded." Well I am living proof that Dillard's dispelled that theory.