Colts’ linebacker Darius Leonard says he and a group he was with at a restaurant in South Carolina were racially profiled.
Indianapolis Colts star linebacker Darius Leonard posted on Instagram Thursday he and four other people were racially profiled at a restaurant in Florence, SC.
Leonard says he was eating a meal with three Black friends and a woman of mixed race when the manager of the Chipotle approached the table.
“We’re sitting there, just casually eating,” Leonard said in the video. “We’re away from everybody … Toward the end of our meal, the manager came up with a terrible attitude and asked us ‘Do we have a problem?’
The manager said to Leonard and his friends a “white guy complained we was verbally abusing him, talking trash to him, and it was basically a lie. And we basically got kicked out of Chipotle because of that. And they said they were going to call the police.
“That’s what being Black in America is right. Us not doing anything wrong. Going out to eat with your family, just trying to spend a little quality time and you can’t enjoy eating anymore.”
Leonard, 24, who played college ball at South Carolina State and was a second-round pick in 2018, continued.”We’re talking about Black Lives Matter and for the guy to look at us and lie and laugh in our face as we walk out and the manger … just come up here and just basically kick us out of Chipotle?! And, we felt like he was very disrespectful and that’s the white privilege that we are talking about.
” … We are tired of this,” Leonard says … “I’m telling you what I go through as a Black man in America. Ya’ll don’t understand what I go through.”
“Ya’ll see the police killing us. Ya’ll seeing all the injustices that we go through. I live it. Day in and day out. And, I’m f*cking tired of it. Yes, I’m upset. I’m tired of it.”
The Indianapolis Star reached out to Chipotle but was unable to get through.
