Hard Rock security guards suspended after they’re filmed tackling a guest at the Atlantic City hotel
The woman was a guest at the hotel with her daughter, who posted several videos of the incident that have attracted millions of views.
ATLANTIC CITY — After a woman was filmed being tackled by security guards and handcuffed outside an elevator at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, the hotel said it had suspended all of the guards involved, pending an investigation.
The woman, Camillia Williams, 37, of Philadelphia, was a guest at the hotel with her daughter, Samirah Mungin, who posted several videos of the incident that have attracted millions of views and numerous calls to boycott the hotel.
In the videos, Mungin called the May 21st incident “racist” and accused the security guards of humiliating and dehumanizing her mother. She did not respond to a message to speak directly.
“Stop touching my mom!” Mungin can be heard screaming in one of the videos, as the security guards wrestle her mother to the ground, sitting on her and pulling her hands behind her back. “Please God. This is my mother! You are hurting my mother please.”
Mungin said her mother suffered a dislocated leg and numerous bruises all over her body and was treated in the emergency room.
“My mother and I are not criminals,” she said in the videos. “We were not trespassing in this hotel. We were paying guests.”
Hard Rock released a statement saying that after reviewing the video, they had suspended “all of the involved security team members while we conduct a further comprehensive investigation.”
“The safety and well-being of our guests are our highest priorities,” the statement said. The casino said it had also contacted the guest “in an effort to resolve this unfortunate situation.”
Mungin said the trouble began when her mother was given a key card that did not work, which she said had happened numerous times before.
In frustration, she went to the front desk to complain and get help with accessing her room. They called security, she said, who placed her mother in a basement holding cell at the casino.
Atlantic City police were also called, according to police spokesman Matt Duffy, and they charged Williams with disorderly conduct.
Williams was taken to police headquarters and spent several hours before being released to her daughter. Duffy said police did not encounter any resistance from Williams, who they said also had an outstanding DUI warrant from Burlington County. He called the call to Hard Rock and arrest “routine.”
The two returned to the Hard Rock, Mungin said, to retrieve their belongings and find her mother’s fiancé before leaving Atlantic City. They encountered the same guards who had treated her aggressively before, she said. She and her mother were then followed by “an entire squad” of employees, she said, as they tried to get to their room.
At the elevator, she said, her mother “stood in the doorway saying that she just wants to ride in this elevator with her daughter and leave.”
A security guard then pulled Williams out of the doorway, she said, and as Mungin began filming, tackled Williams to the ground. She was then handcuffed and an ambulance was called.
She is then filmed sitting on the ground with her hands cuffed behind her back as an EMT stands beside a gurney and tells her to climb aboard herself. She attempts to do so, the gurney moves and she falls back to the floor, crying and saying, “My leg was dislocated, you all don’t believe me.”
Mungin said the Hard Rock employees “taunted and laughed” at her mother while she was being detained in the basement. “She screamed and she cried for help, and the worker there taunted and laughed at her in her face.”
