As a woman fueled her car Tuesday afternoon at the Road Runner Discount gas station in Houma, another driver pulled up, window down, with a message.
“Are you aware there has been an incident in which an American soldier was cursed out and those people are very anti-American? You should be aware of it, and getting your gas somewhere else. We don’t need anybody who is anti-American,” she said as the station’s clerk walked toward her car.
“These are lies,” the clerk pleaded. “Ma’am, please don’t hate me because I look like a Muslim. Please do not hate me for this,” his hands gesturing to his tanned complexion, black hair and brown eyes.
The gas station was the scene of a protest Wednesday sparked by a local television program’s hour-long news and talk show claiming a clerk insulted all U.S. military veterans last week. The store’s owner and cashier say the claim is fueled by racism and are considering a lawsuit claiming HTV host Martin Folse insinuated the store was selling synthetic marijuana and funding terrorism abroad, an assessment Folse denies.
On Monday, Folse took the desk of his evening news call-in show “Bayou Time,” which he regularly hosts on HTV-10, the station he owns. He prefaced the retelling of the alleged insult by highlighting previous “exposés” he’s participated in with Terrebonne Parish sheriff’s deputies busting convenience stores with “foreigners” selling synthetic marijuana and drug-like “bath salts.”
“I don’t have to tell you by looking at the pictures that he was not born in Terrebonne Parish,” he told viewers as clips ran of a convenience store clerk being handcuffed last year. “The reason I say that is we are asked not to profile when we do news stories, but when I tell you this story about the veteran, you will understand that they are profiling us.”
He then recited the account of local surgeon and Army veteran Phillip McAllister, who Folse at first refused to identify.
Efforts to reach McAllister at his office Tuesday and Wednesday were unsuccessful. Folse initially invited The Courier and Daily Comet to interview McAllister at HTV studios Wednesday but later said that would not be possible.
Folse played McAllister’s audio account of the incident on HTV Wednesday night. In it, McAllister said he stopped by the Road Runner to purchase gas and snuff. The clerk was confused by which type of snuff McAllister had ordered. McAllister claims the clerk became upset with him. As he exited, he heard the clerk make a comment.
“I turned around and asked him what he said, at which time he told me that I was a (f***ing ***hole),” McAllister claims in the recording. “I then reminded him that he was able to speak to people that way because of veterans who had sacrificed much for this country. He then informed me that I was a (f***ing ***hole) as a veteran like all veterans,” McAllister claims in the recording. McAllister, whose practice is advertised on HTV, then left the store.
In his TV report Monday, Folse offered a similar story and added that McAllister described the clerk as being “of Middle Eastern descent.” But the clerk, a 25-year-old who said he emigrated from the south Asian country of Nepal five years ago to study civil engineering, claims McAllister is lying. The man wished to withhold his name, saying he is concerned about his safety. “I didn’t even know what the word ‘veteran’ is until this,” the clerk said. “I’m still learning English.”
The clerk claims confusion over the snuff led McAllister to say either “you people” or “Arabs” “don’t know how to serve Americans.” To which the clerk admitted he replied: “If you think that, you are a f***ing ***hole,” repeating that statement before McAllister left the store. “I am living in the United States, the land of opportunity. Why am I going to say I hate veterans?” the clerk said, insisting his insult was directed at what he saw as a racist man and nothing more.
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