MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Two people went inside a grocery store in Frayser only to be forced out with assault rifles.
They said the store clerk got offended and forced them out holding an assault rifle and yelling racial insults.
"After the quarter bounced up he just went off, he was like, 'you (expletive), why you throw that quarter in like that?'", recalled the woman.
The Memphis woman and her boyfriend entered Moses Grocery to buy a snack last Saturday.
"When I looked down, he started grabbing for an assault weapon," she said.
The two did not expect a coin bouncing toward a cashier – to nearly turn deadly.
"Another Arab came out, he was coming right at him with a black AK47,” said the female victim. “I just jumped in front of him I don't know why … I was like, 'please, please don't shoot him.'"
The woman said they stood there with their hands up, then a worker threatened to shoot her and the man, both of them begging for their lives.
“All I did was drop the quarter,” said the man. “How he took that I don't know. Then he said, '(expletive), shut up' and hit me upside my head.'"
The man who was hit believes the store worker was intentionally trying to bait him.
"It's a hatred thing going on toward us I see that all over Memphis," he shared.
The two said as they backed out of the store, the two workers still threatened to fire.
Police have received at least 22 calls about the store in just the past year. Ten of those involved an armed person.
"You can't let fear win,” said NAACP’s president Van Turner in response to the incident. “You can't be so mad at all Black people that any Black person comes into your store you are ready to yell out a racial slur."
The couple said if the store workers fear or dislike Black people they should take their business elsewhere.
"They (police) never took us back to the store to identify them,” said the woman. “Our fear was they were going to keep switching them around, where we can't identify them."
"I'm glad that we got out of there alive,” she said. “But emotionally we're distraught. People be like, 'They didn't kill y'all. They killed my spirit.'"