‘I was in trouble.’ KY Walmart worker, 89, details jewelry counter robbery, assault
An 89-year-old woman working at the jewelry counter at a Kentucky Walmart was knocked down and injured by a man who police say robbed the store.
On Monday, police arrested the man they say committed the crime, and the victim said she isn’t going to let the incident keep her from going back to work.
Wilanna “Billie” Clark, of LaGrange, said she has worked for Walmart for 36 years, 34 of them at the LaGrange store.
“I’m going back Monday,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”
Normally, Clark said, she works in the fitting room area and answers the phones, but she fills in for the woman who works the jewelry counter when she goes to lunch.
That’s what Clark was doing on New Year’s Eve, when a man came in at about 12:30 p.m. and asked to look at some gold chains.
Clark said that when she opened the case, “he stuck his arm in” to grab the necklaces. She said a similar incident had happened a few weeks earlier during a time when she was not at work.
“I knew I was in trouble,” she said.
“I screamed, ‘No,’ and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor,” Clark said.
According to a uniform citation filed by police in Oldham District Court, Shampayle Strother, 26, pushed the clerk back, “causing her to fall and sustain injury to her head.”
Clark said she suffered a laceration to the back of her head and had some vertigo afterward.
“My head was hurting so bad,” she said.
After the incident, police say video shows Strother running toward the Ashbury Best Western. Police think that after he went inside the hotel, he changed clothes in a stairwell before leaving.
A LaGrange police officer said in the citation that employees at the hotel knew Strother and were able to identify him.
The officer said he found Strother in the parking lot of the Oldham County Library Monday Monday afternoon and arrested him. He was wearing a gold necklace taken from Walmart around his wrist at the time, the officer wrote.
Strother, of LaGrange, is charged with first-degree robbery, first-degree wanton endangerment and fourth-degree assault. He was being held in the Oldham County Detention Center on $100,000 bond Tuesday night.
Arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday in Oldham District Court.
As for Clark, she said she is eager to get back to her job.
She works 40 to 50 hours a week and has no plans to slow down.
“I love it,” she said. “You’ve gotta be happy where you work. I work with some of the best people that you would ever want to know.”
She said she was surrounded by customers and co-workers in the immediate aftermath of the robbery.
When the EMTs arrived, she said they were planning to get a stretcher when she made an announcement.
“I said, ‘Hold it right there.’ I said, ‘I’m not going out of here on a stretcher.’”
And she didn’t.
In case of a fall, Clark said she “practices” getting up from the floor at home.
“You keep seeing this commercial that says, ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,’” Clark said.
So with the EMTs watching, she said she got herself up off the floor after the robbery and had a co-worker drive her to the hospital.
Her son Dennis Clark, an officer with the Strathmoor Village Police Department near Louisville, said he got a call from his mom about five minutes after the robbery.
He said she told him, “I don’t want you to be worried ...I’ve gotta run by the hospital.”
“She’s a strong, strong lady,” Dennis Clark said.
Billie Clark said she feels “blessed” that she was able to make a quick recovery.
She said she took a bad fall and broke her neck in 2014. Her doctor told her then that another fall could be fatal.
“I’ve had so many calls and so many good wishes,” she said. “It’s just been remarkable.”
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 7:57 PM.
