A Black woman says she was forced to leave a Virginia restaurant along with her friends during a Friendsgiving outing — even though, she says, none of them were involved in a fight that broke out between two other women.
Now she and the NAACP are publicly speaking out, calling the incident discriminatory.
“I’m still shocked,” Shakoya Somerville-Holt told CBS affiliate WTKR about what happened earlier this month at the Cork and Bull restaurant in Chesapeake.
In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Somerville-Holt met up with her “sister circle” at the popular steakhouse for an evening of “fellowship” and laughter, according to the outlet. But the gathering quickly took a disturbing turn.
The group of nine friends had not yet received their drinks when two Black women they did not know began fighting, ABC affiliate WVEC reported.
Video obtained by WTKR allegedly shows the two women struggling on the floor while people who appeared to be restaurant employees stepped in. Immediately afterward, Somerville-Holt says management told her and her friends they needed to leave, despite their insistence that they had nothing to do with the altercation, according to the outlet.
When Somerville-Holt asked if the restaurant was closing for the night, she says she received a shocking answer.
“No, we’re just not servicing you all because y’all like to fight,” Somerville-Holt recalled being told, per WTKR. According to the outlet, her group was the only one asked to leave.
That wasn’t the end of the ordeal. When local police arrived in response to the fight, Somerville-Holt says management then asked her to provide a statement, WVEC reported.
“The two women had already left, and when law enforcement arrived, the manager asked me to give a statement … we weren’t involved in this,” she said, according to the outlet.
For Somerville-Holt and her friends, the night left a lasting emotional impact.
“We definitely made memories, but those memories are memories of pain, hurt, embarrassment, confusion and humiliation,” she told WTKR.
Her lawyer and Cork and Bull did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cork and Bull Chophouse previously declined to comment to WTKR, and a manager told the outlet that their attorneys had advised them not to issue a statement.
Following the incident, the Chesapeake NAACP and Virginia State Conference NAACP have rallied around Somerville-Holt and her friends, who are considering legal action, WVEC reported.
“To whomever it was that thought they had the authority to walk up to this group of women and direct them to leave with the response of ‘you people like to fight,’ should be immediately counseled, if not dismissed, and the restaurant should issue an apology,” Rev. Cozy Bailey, president of the NAACP Virginia State Conference, told the outlet.
Somerville-Holt says she’s speaking out because she doesn’t want anyone else to experience what she did.
“No one should be removed from an establishment or denied service when they’ve done nothing wrong,” she told WTKR. “And there should be some type of accountability, clarity, as well as prevention.”
She added, “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else again.”
