A 7-Eleven clerk in Lombard, Ill., faces charges for a hate crime after he threatened minority customers with a knife while yelling racial slurs at them, according to police.
Four teenagers, three of them African-American, and the other a Latino, hadn’t said anything to the clerk. But a short while after they entered the store on Friday night, police say 32-year-old Ranferi Basilo began yelling at them.
The boys never responded but that didn’t stop the racist clerk from following them into the parking lot continuing the menacing behavior.
“The clerk began yelling racial slurs at them. They continued shopping, he continued yelling slurs at them,” Lombard police Lt. Joe Grage explained.
“He followed them outside, pulled a knife, they began to run and he slashed the tires on their car,” Grage continued.
Once the boys realized they were out of danger, they called the police. The police were able to confirm what happened to the youngsters because of footage from the store’s surveillance camera.
Basilo has been charged with two counts of felony hate crime, criminal damage to property and aggravated assault.
7-Eleven did not respond to media requests for comment. Joe DePinto is the president and CEO of 7Eleven, Inc. and leads an all-male and predominately white executive leadership team. The company has never participated in participate in Fair360, formerly DiversityInc’s 2018 Top 50 Companies for Diversity competition.
