Alabama Riverboat Brawl: White Business Owner Hit with Hundreds of 1-Star Reviews After His Involvement in Melee
Aug. 7 2023, Published 4:33 p.m. ET
A business owner in Selma, Alabama, has been hit with hundreds of negative reviews on Yelp after being spotted at the wild riverboat melee, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Chase Shipman's shop Vasser's Mini Mart is roughly 50 miles away from where chaos erupted over the weekend.
The viral video showed a brawl, which appeared to be racially divided, broke out after a verbal dispute between a black dock worker and several white men who appeared to be parking their pontoon boat in a space reserved for the city's riverboat.
In the clip, several white people are seen fighting a single Black man, who according to Jasmine Williams of WSFA is a dock worker. Others soon rushed in to help including a boy named Aaren who swam across a Montgomery river and is being hailed as a "hero."
Following the shocking spat, many were arrested, Shipman denied being involved.
"I am sure most of you have seen the news about the riverboat incident. Yes, I was there but I was the first to try to get away," he wrote via his business Facebook page. "You can see in the video I attached, and I do not condone what happened."
"I tried to stop it and realized that I could not, so I tried to get away," Shipman continued his statement. "There is a video of me being the first to run away because what was happening was wrong and I did not want to be a part of it. I realize I have a business to run and represent and no charges were filed against me because I was not involved."
"I would give this place zero stars if I could," one review stated, accusing Shipman of racism and entitlement. "Entitled Thugs that's all, don't throw rocks and hide your hands what y'all thought was going to happen," another scathing Yelp review read.
Photos from the melee, as well as complaints, have flooded their Yelp page, which is no longer letting others submit.
A new alert stated, "This business recently received increased public attention resulting in an influx of people posting their views to this page, so we have temporarily disabled the ability to post here as we work to investigate the content."
"While racism has no place on Yelp and we unequivocally reject racism or discrimination in any form, all reviews on Yelp must reflect an actual first-hand consumer experience (even if that means disabling the ability for users to express points of view we might agree with)."
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On Sunday, Mayor Steven L. Reed vowed that justice will be served, confirming in a Twitter post that the Montgomery Police Department "acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job."
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