St. Louis grocery clerk humiliates black couple by accusing them of fraud: ‘Racial profiling is not good, bro’

A St. Louis area grocery clerk lost his job after accusing a black couple of fraud when they tried to purchase a money order to pay their rent.

Kellen Hill shared video of the incident Monday on Facebook, saying the Schnucks employee refused to sell him a $1,100 money order because he showed a Florida driver's license to go along with his debit card, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"Due to multiple recent incidents of fraud where subjects were using stolen debit cards and showing out-of-state identification — most frequently from the state of Florida — to purchase high-dollar money orders, the customer was asked to use cash to make the purchase instead," CEO Todd Schnuck said.

Hill called his girlfriend and asked her to come from work to bring the cash they needed, but the employee still refused to sell them a money order.

The girlfriend is shown crying in one of the videos Hill posted on Facebook, and other customers intervened and asked why the money order couldn't be sold to them.

Hill asks the clerk if the money order denial was related to a new policy, and the employee says yes but says "I don't have to tell you any of this stuff."

"I'm trying to help you keep your job," Hill says, "because racial profiling is not good, bro."

"We're not racial profiling," the employee says.

The clerk eventually sells the couple a money order, but he was terminated after the Facebook videos went viral.

"Although the teammate was focused on the recent increase in fraud, once the customer produced cash for the transaction, the money order should have been sold without further issue," Schnuck said. "I want our customers to feel welcomed and respected in our stores and I sincerely apologize for how our customers were treated in this instance."