A Montana hotel worker has gone viral on TikTok after she appeared to be mocking a Native American woman’s accent during a heated exchange.
Jaylynn Mitchell, a hotel guest at the Great Falls Inn in Butte, Mont. was recording an altercation she was having with Kathryn Carrette, a housekeeper at the hotel, over the checkout times for her handicapped relative on Feb. 9.
“I’m gonna put this on TikTok. I’m gonna put this on TikTok,” Carrette said allegedly mocking Mitchell’s indigenous accent, repeating a threat she had made off camera.
Mitchell, who calls out Carrette for using the condescending voice, saying, “see how she’s mocking our accent,” then had the police called on her and her family by the hotel’s general manager, identified as Kelli LaFountain, according to KRTV.
Mitchell, who is part of Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, was staying at the hotel with her family, one of whom was her paraplegic uncle, for whom the family had requested handicap accommodations prior to their stay.
Mitchell claims they requested an extra hour past the designated 11 a.m. checkout time, which hotel employees did not honor, leading to the shouting match in the lobby.
The tense exchange led to other members of Mitchell’s family chiming in, saying Carrette and LeFountain were being “disrespectful” to their family member.
“He was supposed to be out at 11! That’s the whole point. I don’t care if he’s a quadriplegic,” Carrette responds angrily in the video.
LaFountain, on the phone with police, says they had “very disruptive guests in the lobby” and that Mitchell was recording them because they were “stupid white people.”
Neither Mitchell nor her family members were heard on video mentioning anything about the two hotel employees’ race.
A responding officer de-escalated the situation between the two parties, according to KRTV.
Mitchell’s video has been viewed nearly 900K times as of Friday morning.
“I just want an apology to my uncle and to my family as a whole, like we didn’t deserve to be treated that way by the establishment that we paid money for,” Mitchell told the outlet.
The Great Falls Inn claims it has received threatening phone calls because of the viral TikTok.
Staff told KRTV that Mitchell had issued 30 threats during the altercation and that the hotel and its employees were not racist.
The Great Falls Inn released a statement to KRTV stating, “We are fair, open-minded, and honest. We treat each guest with dignity and respect. This is a highly unfortunate incident that occurred. Because the safety of our guests is paramount. We became concerned about the level of disruption. The police were called, and the matter has been taken care of.”