For Penny Thompson — a 42-year-old Black woman from Ohio — what was supposed to be a joyful month-long visit with her 15-year-old son instead turned into a disturbing incident of racial profiling and false accusations. Thompson had driven from North Carolina to Ohio to spend time with her son, and at a stop in a local Walmart in the Cleveland suburb of Mentor she purchased a 55-inch television for him so he could play video games during his stay. 

Everything changed when, as they were loading the new TV into her car, a white woman she did not know suddenly accused her son of stealing the woman’s wallet from her purse—purely based on the prince’s son’s appearance and allegedly because “he looked guilty.” There was no evidence, no description beyond that, and in fact the wallet turned out to have been inside the woman’s purse the entire time. 

Thompson said that this incident could not have happened had she and her son been white. She pointed out that other white boys of his age and size were in the store that same day and were not even questioned. Meanwhile, from the moment she entered the store she felt singled out: the manager required her to produce identification to match the debit card she was using — a scrutiny she said was not applied to the white customers making similarly large purchases. “We were racially profiled from the time we walked in the store to the time we walked out of the store and into the parking lot,” she said.

In the parking lot, the situation escalated: a blue pickup truck driven by the white woman’s husband pulled up behind Thompson’s vehicle and blocked her in as she attempted to load her purchase. The woman stepped out, began accusing Thompson’s son of theft, and was filmed by the teen. At one point the accuser said she was “waiting” for Thompson to hit her; Thompson said she told the woman plainly she wasn’t going to stoop to that. The confrontation — recorded on a now-viral TikTok video — ended when police arrived minutes later and held Thompson and her son onsite for about 20 minutes, before allowing them to leave. Eventually the police report noted that the wallet was found in the woman’s purse. 

Thompson says she is unsure whether she will pursue legal action against the woman, suggesting the accuser may be mentally ill and likely lacks the means to pay damages. Instead, she frames her grievance more broadly: she believes the bigger problem lies with Walmart and the broader system of customer protection. “Come on now, I spent more money than anybody that day,” she said.

This incident adds to a troubling pattern of racial profiling in retail settings, especially where Black customers making large purchases are subjected to extra scrutiny.