Former Alexander McQueen employee Othman Ibela, a native of Gabon, is filing a Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against staff at the designer’s NYC flagship store in the Meatpacking District for tormenting him with racist slurs during the two years he worked there as a security guard.
He says the shop’s clerk, Kimberley Mahnke, “repeatedly made jokes about me running nude in Africa with a spear in my hand,” and told him that President Obama and his family would be kicked out of the White House and “sent back to Africa” after the 2012 elections, reports the New York Post. The shop’s manager Catherine Flynn has also been named, in which he claims she repeatedly asked “why Muslims were always killing people” and mocked his accent. According to Ibela, black customers were completely ignored by the boutique’s staff unless they happened to be Beyoncé or a similar celebrity.
Apparently things got so bad Ibela had thoughts of harming the staff and himself. “They attacked me again and again,” he told The Post. “I wanted to kill them and kill myself. Then everybody would be a loser.” He was so distressed by the attacks that he required hospitalization for anxiety attacks and depression, the filing says.
