Questions persist about strange mall incident after Georgia man’s viral video

MCDONOUGH — Three days later, the Crumps were still trying to make sense of the incident at the mall. It did not fit the pattern.

In almost 33 years of caring for their son — who uses a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy — they had noticed something wonderful about the human race: Most people who saw Demond Crump Jr. went out of their way to be kind.

“Everywhere we go around the world, everywhere we go around the country, people always speak to him,” Demond Crump Sr. said Monday as he sat with his wife and son in the showroom of the family business, Reign Premium Sanitary Napkins. “People make room for us, people will get out the way, people do this, people bring us to the front of the line. We’ve had people pay for our meals in a restaurant, just anonymously. They pay for our meals.

“And this was the first encounter I ever had in his lifetime where someone didn’t show no type of compassion toward him. First time ever.”

What happened at Cumberland Mall on Friday is something of a mystery.

It was “heartbreaking,” Mr. Crump said.

It was “deeply unfortunate,” a mall spokesperson said.

It was either outrageous, if the Crumps are correct, or merely a “misunderstanding,” if the official explanation is accurate.

Either way, it went viral.

By Monday night, Mr. Crump’s Facebook post about the incident had played more than 67,000 times. A video on Instagram accumulated more than 900,000 views. And on Twitter/X, one post featuring the video was said to have more than 14 million impressions.

It showed Mr. Crump standing at the mall, telling a story that put tears in his eyes.

“But I just wanted to have this evidence to show that now we’re leaving the mall,” he said. “Because if my son can’t stay, then we can’t stay.”

Credit: Thomas Lake/AJC

Credit: Thomas Lake/AJC

Last week the Crumps took part in a pop-up event for vendors at Cumberland Mall that was timed to coincide with Major League Baseball’s All-Star Week. The mall is less than a mile from Truist Park, which is hosting the festivities.

On Friday morning, somewhere between Sephora and Starbucks, Demond and Qiana Crump, who live in Stockbridge, set up a table lined with their wares. Their son was with them, as usual.

That’s when the trouble began.

Qiana Crump says she got an odd message from a woman who was acting as an intermediary between the vendors and mall management. She says she was told, “This is not a bring-your-child-to-work day.”

The intermediary declined to comment when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called her. She did not respond to a follow-up text asking if she had indeed delivered such a message to the Crumps.

In any case, Mrs. Crump was taken aback. She says she replied,

“He’s not a child. He’s 32.”

Mr. Crump says the message was clear: They were told their son couldn’t be with them at the vending table.

Both parents were horrified. They love their son and consider him an important part of their business. They say they were told the message had come from the mall’s general manager. And so, when they were asked if they’d like to speak with the manager, Mr. Crump said yes.

The mall’s general manager, Chris McCoy, is a native of rural Georgia who rose to fame in the 1990s as a quarterback for the U.S. Naval Academy’s football team. McCoy, contacted by the AJC, referred questions to the mall’s operating company, Brookfield Properties, which declined to make him available for an interview.

The Crumps say McCoy was not kind to them. They say that whatever the problem was, he didn’t explain it well.

Mr. Crump says McCoy “wanted my son out of the mall” for reasons he did not make clear. Mr. Crump says he told McCoy, “This is my son. He’s a human being. … He’s not a child that we just shove off in a corner.”

The Crumps say McCoy told them they could leave the mall and file whatever complaint they were going to file.

Lindsay Kahn, spokesperson for Brookfield Properties, wrote this in response to an email from the AJC about the encounter: “This was a deeply unfortunate situation, and we regret our poor communication that led to this misunderstanding. We reached out to Mr. Crump and have welcomed his family to return to our shopping center.”

When a reporter pressed for more details and asked to interview McCoy, Kahn replied, “While we cannot accommodate an interview, we can confirm that at no time was the family asked to leave our shopping center.”

When a reporter wrote again, asking what triggered the conversation between McCoy and the Crumps, Kahn wrote, “We were simply trying to keep the pathways clear. Again, our team never asked the family to leave the shopping center.”

Mr. Crump disputed this statement. He said his son wasn’t blocking a pathway, and even if he had been, McCoy never brought that up during their conversation at the mall.

After the encounter, the Crumps made the video that would later go viral. Then they left the mall.

On Monday Demond Jr. went to work with Demond Sr. as usual. There at the distribution center in McDonough, Qiana Crump sat by her son and held his hand. Demond Jr. usually says no more than a word or two at a time. He was asked if the incident at the mall had hurt his feelings.

“Yeah,” he said.

“It’s weird,” his mother said.

“Yeah,” he said.

He was getting a little tired, so his mother gently readjusted his head in the wheelchair’s headrest. She mentioned that management from another mall had reached out to the Crumps, inviting them to sell Reign products there.

“No,” her son said.

He was asked to clarify. Did he feel like going back to a mall anytime soon?

“No,” he said.

On Monday night, Mr. Crump said his attorneys were reviewing the matter. A reporter asked him if there was a lesson in all of this.

“Treat people like humans,” he said. “Don’t ever underestimate anyone.”