THIS IS TRUE.
(Read here and here.)
Joe Ottomanelli reportedly gave Victor Sheppard the noose as a “gift,” the victim told the News.
“If you ever have any stress, just put it around your neck and pull it. I could even help you with it,” Sheppard claims Ottomanelli told him.
Ottomanelli did not deny giving Sheppard the noose, but he said the whole incident was a joke. He added that he wanted to apologize, noting that he works with many black people and wasn’t “raised that way.”
I don’t know about you, but that DOES NOT seem like something to joke about. According to the delivery man, Victor Sheppard, who’s been delivering to the butcher for eight months, this isn’t the first racist thing that Ottomanelli has said to him.
“Mentally and emotionally, he’s really hurt me. I felt very endangered, just doing my job,” Sheppard tells the Daily News. “This is a man who’s 58-plus. He really thinks handing a noose to a black man is sending a playful message?”
And of course people have come to Ottomanelli’s defense, trying to make this racist action seem less horrible than it really is.
The owner of Bleeker Street Pizza, who said he has known Ottomanelli for 20 year, said the allegations against him were “bullsh–.”
“He probably joked and someone took it the wrong way,” the pizza maker, Tony Salihaj, said. “I think it’s bulls–t.”
I would urge people to stop buying from both Ottomanelli & Sons Meat Market and Bleeker Street Pizza (hell, give them negative reviews to let them know that racism will not be supported by your patronage). There is no way anyone could possibly defend these actions and try to play it off as a harmless joke.
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