James Wilder Jr. is a practice squad running back for the Cincinnati Bengals who played for Florida State from 2011 to 2013. On Monday, Wilder went on social media to claim that he was racially profiled and kicked out of a Toys ‘R’ Us by a manager in Kentucky.
Wow!!! Going shopping for the fam n sittin at the front desk for being accused of stealing out of toys r us!!!
Said I walked in this morning and stole n now I came back to steal more!!!
Cops called on me for this!!!
I’m going over n beyond to make sure this guy is fired!!!! I won’t even blame the whole store for his racist profiling!!!!
Wilder also posted this video on Facebook, further explaining that a manager approached him and accused him of entering the store earlier in the day and trying to walk out with a cart full of toys.
According to WCPO, police were called to the scene, and after a “verbal altercation” between Wilder and an employee, police asked Wilder to leave, which he did, but not before returning to get the name of the manager.
Wilder has since deleted the tweets (the Facebook video is still up) because he claims he does not want to be a distraction to the Bengals, although he is not backtracking on his original claim of what happened in the store.
https://twitter.com/IAm_Wilder32/status/679172662120292352
https://twitter.com/IAm_Wilder32/status/679173142510727169
https://twitter.com/IAm_Wilder32/status/679174268303839233
A supervisor at the store declined to comment, and a statement from Toys ‘R’ Us said only that they were “currently looking into this matter.”
