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Other racial taunts reported at Turnersville Wal-Mart

Washington Township police are widening their inquiry into racial incidents at the Turnersville Wal-Mart after the arrest of a juvenile on charges of harassment and bias intimidation, Chief Rafael Muniz said yesterday.

Washington Township police are widening their inquiry into racial incidents at the Turnersville Wal-Mart after the arrest of a juvenile on charges of harassment and bias intimidation, Chief Rafael Muniz said yesterday.

At a noon news conference, Muniz and Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean Dalton announced that they had arrested a 16-year-old Atlantic County boy accused of using a store telephone in the home-and-garden section last Sunday to announce over the public-address system: "Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: Will all the black people please leave the store. Thank you."

Officials declined to describe the boy's race and said he was in his parents' custody.

Gloucester County NAACP leaders, who attended the news conference, said they had been told of two other recent incidents at the Wal-Mart, on Route 42.

On Wednesday, a man called the store and asked Wal-Mart to tell African Americans to leave. And someone used the store's public-address system several months ago, too, to ask African Americans to leave, they said.

Muniz said he was seeking a warrant to go through Wal-Mart's telephone records to verify and trace the Wednesday call.

Police and the Prosecutor's Office are also investigating whether the boy's 16-year-old companion, also from Atlantic County, was involved last Sunday.

If he were an adult, the arrested boy could serve up to 18 months in jail if convicted. As a juvenile, he would likely receive counseling and maybe a brief stay in a juvenile facility, Dalton said.

The boy was arrested late Friday after Muniz put his 13-member detective staff on the case.

The police were joined by county detectives.

The incident Wednesday was reported by Terence Jones, chairman of the NAACP chapter's fact-finding committee. At 12:21 p.m. that day, he said, a person called the Turnersville Wal-Mart and said, "You need to get the n- out of Wal-Mart right now."

Jones also said that about three or four months ago at the 24-hour superstore, someone had commandeered the public-address system about 2:30 a.m. and asked African Americans to leave.

Muniz said Wal-Mart had not reported either of those incidents to the police.

Jones said that because no official reports had been made, "it seems like Wal-Mart just brushed this under the rug."

"We're pleased this matter is resolved," said David Tovar, Wal-Mart senior director for media relations and digital communications. "We have updated our intercom system at this store to prevent this from happening again. We again apologize to all of our customers and associates who had to listen to something so offensive."

Muniz said Wal-Mart had been invited to send a representative to the news conference.

None attended to answer reporters' questions.

Gloucester County NAACP president Loretta Winters, who attended the news conference, said she was happy that Wal-Mart had turned over videotapes, which helped police investigate.

But, she said, she was not pleased that Wal-Mart had not reported the other two incidents to police.

"If something had been reported before, we may not be standing here right now," she said.

Witnesses to the documented incident last Sunday said store officials had taken about five minutes before apologizing and announcing that the offensive utterance was not an official Wal-Mart statement.

On its Web site, Wal-Mart said that the announcement probably had not been made by an employee and that it had updated its phone system so that a customer cannot access the public-address system again.

Muniz and Dalton said Wal-Mart had been helpful in tracking down the arrested boy by turning over hours of store surveillance tapes. The boy was caught on one of the tapes.

Combing through Facebook also aided the investigation, officials said. Teenagers who knew the accused were gossiping on the Internet social-networking site, police said.

Winters, of the NAACP, said she would talk to Wal-Mart about setting up sensitivity training.

"Hopefully, they will welcome us in," she said.