A video shows Walmart employees restraining a young Black man over alleged shoplifting, but a bystander who filmed it says he has special needs
"They know his situation."
A video from a Walmart in Big Rapids, Michigan, shows employees physically restraining a young man during an alleged shoplifting incident. According to The Nerd Stash, the video shows the young man on the ground near the store’s entrance while an employee is bent over him. Several bystanders are visible nearby as the incident unfolds near the Grocery entrance.
The young man is later seen standing and confronting the employee who had restrained him. The two appear to argue while raising their voices, and a woman in a pink T-shirt steps in and can be heard arguing with staff. A bystander named Anitra Raspberry, who filmed the encounter and posted it on Facebook, is the woman seen intervening throughout the video.
As she continues arguing with employees, the man holding the young man lets him go, allowing him to stand up. The young man thanks the woman for recording the incident, tells her “You’re my sweetheart,” and hugs her several times as she keeps pressing staff on why they handled the situation this way.
The woman who filmed it says he has special needs
She questions why employees treated him that way, given what she says was an obvious situation. The video ends with the argument between her and staff still going. A separate, unverified account is also circulating. According to the outlet, a witness statement shared on Instagram by @realblackgirlpolitics says a woman leaving the same Walmart heard the young man, identified only as Levi, repeatedly yelling, “Leave me alone!”
The witness claims Levi has special needs and was shopping with his case manager when the encounter with security escalated, and alleges that security grabbed him around the neck and took him to the ground.
The young man’s disability status could not be independently verified, and the store’s own website lists sensory-friendly shopping hours from 8 to 10 a.m. daily. Walmart has not issued a public statement on the incident, a familiar response in similar Walmart confrontations. Cases like this one turn on a specific legal standard most people don’t know exists.
Michigan law gives retail employees what’s known as the shopkeeper’s privilege, codified under MCL 600.2917, which shields a merchant from certain civil damages over a suspected-shoplifting detention only if the merchant had probable cause and used reasonable, non-excessive force. If the neck-restraint allegation holds up, it would also brush against a separate Michigan statute, MCL 750.84, which classifies assault by strangulation or suffocation as a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison.
Exceeding the shopkeeper’s privilege, regardless of whether theft actually occurred, can expose a store to civil liability for false imprisonment or battery.
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