Shocking moment looters clear out black-owned Philadelphia boutique in one MINUTE during night of chaos
LOOTERS in Philadelphia raided and stripped a black-owned boutique bare in less than a minute, amid protests over police fatally shooting Walter Wallace Jr.
Surveillance camera footage showed about two dozen looters breaking into La’Vanter Boutique in Pennsylvania’s largest city on Tuesday night.
First, two women are seen breaking in and grabbing items.
“I hope we do not get caught!” one woman says.
Moments later, at least 20 more people swarm the store, taking clothes and leaving hangers on the floor and picking accessories off the shelves.
“We had everything taken from us in less than a minute,” the boutique’s owner Jameelah Scurry said on Wednesday, according to the Daily Mail.
Scurry told ABC 6 that “we as black people, really need to reunite and come together” and that “destroying and tearing down our own people is not the answer.”
She said she had just come up on the two-year anniversary of opening the boutique and was celebrating it before it was ransacked.
“It’s been a rough journey, selling our house, moving, to get the money together to start our dream,” she said.
“We are now in danger of losing everything we worked so hard for.”
It was the second time the boutique has been looted.
The first break-in occurred on August 27 when protests erupted over the officer-involved shooting of Jacob Blake.
Scurry said she graduated from Peirce College and left her job, maxed out her credit cards, drained her savings account and sold her house to open the boutique because she wanted to invest in her “dreams and community.”
A GoFundMe fundraiser launched on Wednesday for Scurry had garnered more than $28,000 by Thursday night.
“It’s been a real blessing,” Scurry said.
“I appreciate everybody that reached out to even give us encouraging words and that are praying for us.”
The boutique was just one of at least 200 small businesses that have reportedly been targeted by looters.
Civil unrest and peaceful protest emerged in Philadelphia in response to police shooting Wallace Jr, 27, who had approached them with a knife on Monday afternoon.
Wallace Jr’s family said he had bipolar disease and that they had called an ambulance to help him with a mental health emergency.
Instead, cops who responded “butchered” Wallace Jr, his father Walter Wallace Sr said.
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Wallace Sr said that violence in the city was “not helping my family.”
“They’re showing disrespect. Stop this violence and chaos. People have businesses,” he said.
“We all got to eat. It’s an SOS to help, not to hurt.”