Walmart says it will ask a customer to no longer shop at their stores after she was caught on video hurling racial abuse at other customers in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Monday.
Video posted to Facebook on Monday night that shows a woman telling one customer to "go back to Mexico" and calling another customer a racial epithet has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on the social network.
Eva Hicks, a mother of three, said she politely asked the woman to step to one side as she reached for medicine. It was then the woman became aggressive, Hicks told CNN.
"She moved back her cart and immediately started saying that people bother her on every aisle, and started saying more hateful things to me," Hicks recounted and then took out her phone and began to record the encounter.
The woman, who has not been identified, told Hicks to "go back to Mexico" and accused her of being rude.
Another woman off-camera intervenes and tells the woman to stop being "ignorant." The woman on camera responds, "a n***er's calling me ignorant?"
"I have never experienced anything like that in my life," Hicks said. "Nobody has ever talked to me like that, I felt very insulted and unwanted."
Hicks, originally from Mexico City, says she has been living in the United States for more than 30 years.
In the video she tells the woman that this is her home. "It's not your country, we don't want you here," the woman retorted.
"I am an American citizen, I consider this home. I am not going to leave, I am going to stay here, I am not going to shut up, I am going to speak up," Hicks said Wednesday, adding that she posted the video to Facebook to raise awareness.
"I have seen a lot of these incidents lately, I believe ever since the Trump administration came into power, he can say hateful things to other races and other countries, these people think it's okay for them to do the same."
In a statement posted online Walmart said it had "no tolerance for the language or actions" of the customer and commended the staff member seen in the video, saying he acted appropriately by asking the woman to leave.
A Walmart spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday that they were working to identify the woman and "once identified we will ask she no longer shops at our stores."
Hicks said she hopes to meet the woman who came to her defense and was subsequently called the N-word.
"I don't know her, I am supposed to meet her today," she said. "I want to meet her to say thank you and just give her a hug."
