A video has emerged in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, showing a clerk at a local convenience store beating a customer as he suffers a seizure. Now, the community is outraged as the victim has been hospitalized and days later cannot move his whole body.
On Dec. 22 at the Princess Market convenience store around 3:30 p.m. on West Raleigh Boulevard after a 56-year-old Black man entered the store.
Gregory Evans, according to his family, started having a seizure when the clerk left his post behind the counter to confront him. It was then that the person started to beat Evans with a stick despite the man experiencing a medical crisis. The violent assault was captured on cellphones by other customers.
WRAL, a local NBC affiliate, assisted in the investigation of the assault by providing authorities with video copies of the incident they had already acquired.
Sobhi Hassan, 68, was arrested by Rocky Mount Police Department earlier on Tuesday, Dec. 28, and was charged with simple assault in connection with the incident.
The video shows Hassan shouting at Evans, “Get out now,” before coming over to beat him six times on his leg during his seizure. As a result of the altercation, Evans is hospitalized and undergoing tests.
The incident has prompted acts of civil unrest calling for justice for Evans. Protestors cleaned up trash, as they collect signatures for a petition to get the store shut down, claiming that the store has a history of treating customers “in a negative and discriminatory way.”
