Share, share, share! Find them! Expose them! My family was subjected to this horrific treatment by guests at the Omni. TheOmni did NOTHING to ensure our safety or denounce the behavior of their other hotel guests. The guests were allowed to remain on the property until Memorial Day. My niece saw them going into their room, which was in the same building and on the same floor as ours and my kids were frightened when we seen them at the pool later Sunday evening. Listen to the vile words they spewed at us. Disgusting, to say the least. The Omni has now resorted to LYING about the incident.
Posted by Covey Banks on Wednesday, May 30, 2018
What was supposed to be a fun-filled day under the Florida sun soon turned sour for a Black doctor and her family after they were verbally attacked by a racist white couple.
The drama unfolded last weekend as Dr. Covey Banks and her family went for an evening swim at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate swimming pool. All seemed well, but the family found themselves the victims of a nasty attack after a white woman instructed her young daughter to pee in the pool as they swam.
Banks detailed the shocking incident in a Facebook post, writing, “The little girl was crying and begging her mother to take her to the bathroom. The mom started looking around we presumed for the bathroom, and we pointed it out to her … She started yelling ‘you don’t know what MY daughter is saying,’ ‘I’m taking her to the bathroom,’ ‘I was not telling her to pee in the pool (guilty conscience), etc.”
The encounter only escalated from there. After taking the child to the restroom, Banks said the woman began telling her kids to splash them. The doctor said her family splashed back as the woman’s kids repeatedly cannon-balled into the hotel pool. After failing to get much reaction out of them, Banks said the woman finally turned to leave, saying, “come on, let’s leave these Black bitches.”
That’s when the woman’s mother, an older lady, started chiming in, yelling “Black bitches, black bitches” as Banks and her family continued to swim. The doctor said it was a threat hurled by the mother that eventually prompted her to get out of the pool. A confrontation ensued.
“The mom and the dad kept walking (to leave), but the grandma and grandpa continued to antagonize us,” Banks wrote. “You know they dropped the n-word. The grandmother tried to swing at my niece and knock her phone out of her hand. I grabbed her arm and stopped her.”
In video of the incident posted to Facebook, the older couple, identified as “Jed and Granny Clampett,” is heard hurling racial slurs at the Black woman’s family, warning them “… next time, don’t come to Florida.” At one point, the “Granny” looks directly into the camera and shouts “Black n—-r!’
Banks said she eventually called hotel security, who didn’t offer much help. So, she then called the police to complain about the couple who’d just harassed and made threats toward her family. When officers finally arrived, Banks said police went and spoke with the white family FIRST and told her and her family to “… stand over there and wait” to give their statements.
“We go over and wait, another officer comes and asks if I wanted to press charges,” she recalled. “He said that we’d both get charged because she had a scratch on her arm. She screams, curses, yells racial slurs, obviously under the influence, swings at my niece but she got a scratch on her arm for being stopped and we’ll BOTH be charged?!”
“2/3 officers were rude and completely unprofessional,” Banks continued. “… I gave my statement. Witnesses also came downstairs and wrote their statements in our defense.”
Banks noted her Facebook account was temporarily suspended because her video of the incident contained hate speech — the hate speech spewed by the “Clampetts.”
The Omni Hotel didn’t respond to requests for comment.
