A white Georgia woman allegedly tried to run over a Black Dollar Tree employee after an argument erupted in the checkout aisle and spilled outside the store.
A witness who goes by “shesweb” online jumped in to help the rattled cashier, whom she identified as Morgan Lewis.
Sandy Springs police told Atlanta Black Star that officers arrested Cheryl Hardwick on Sept. 28 and charged her with three counts of aggravated assault.
She allegedly plowed her Tesla into Lewis, shesweb, and shesweb’s cousin in the parking lot of the Dollar Tree on Roswell Road.
Shesweb said Hardwick became enraged when the cashier declined her demand to unload her basket onto the conveyor belt. “Karen was going on and on, calling [Lewis] lazy, saying she needed to get an education, suggesting she needed to apply at Wings ‘n Things.”
Lewis stormed out, shesweb said, ready to quit, but the situation soon escalated. As shesweb was checking out, she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, Lewis frantically running from a Tesla outside, Hardwick behind the wheel.
“I stopped everything I was doing, and I ran out there,” she recalled in a Sept. 28 TikTok video.
She said at that point, “Karen decides to get out of her car, and she’s making her way towards us. As I’m trying to de-escalate the hell out of the situation, Karen pushed me. Oh my gosh, I’m about to call the police, actually.”
When Hardwick returned to her Tesla, shesweb breathed a momentary sigh of relief thinking the nightmare was over. But instead, she said, it got worse. She alleges Hardwick put her car in reverse and charged at them. “This happened about three or four times,” she said.
A second TikTok video shows Hardwick shouting from her car window as shesweb, her cousin, and Lewis try to shelter behind a lamppost.
The clip does not show Hardwick’s car making contact, but shesweb claims it did: “She hit us, and at this point [Lewis’s] shoe is off her foot, and her red jacket is on the floor. My phone is right by the tire. All she had to do was put that b–ch in reverse, and it’s finito.”
Angered and confused, Lewis smashed the Tesla’s front window, according to shesweb. The three women then ran back inside Dollar Tree, but Hardwick followed and continued her rant on camera.
“The Black cashier came out and smashed the windshield, and it’s because she’s Black right?” Hardwick shouted to bystanders and employees. She then accused another Black Dollar Tree employee of racism: “You’re f–king racist. You know what you don’t like? You don’t like someone calling you out on being f–kng racist.”
At one point, she addressed the person filming, inquiring if he was getting “Karen content.” She asked him, “Did you get served today? Did you get served? You didn’t get any attitude for being lazy and Black?”
Despite shesweb filming the incident on her phone and the Tesla possibly recording it with its own cameras, Hardwick insisted the cashier was “going to jail.”
According to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Hardwick posted a $60,000 bond and was released after her arrest.
As of Sept. 30, police records show no charges against Lewis.
In follow-up videos, shesweb said she is currently pursuing a restraining order against Hardwick and has set up a GoFundMe for Lewis, who is now unemployed.
