Real estate company now says it's 'disassociating' from agent after online posts suggested she used racial slurs

Gina Benthuysen, chief executive of Raleigh-based Keller Williams Preferred, said in a statement Wednesday, “We have decided to disassociate with Kim Barnhart while we further investigate the facts on this matter."

During the pandemic, the neighborhood allows only residents to use the pool.

"When I got there, there was a large group of teens I had not seen before, not one of them," Barnhart said Monday. "I asked them who lived in the neighborhood, did any of them live in the neighborhood, and at that time, they all looked at each other, and nobody said that they did."

When she asked them to leave, she said, the group became belligerent.

"They were mooning me, throwing up the middle finger," she said. "They're surrounding my car. I had to get into my car and roll up my windows, telling them, if they weren't going to listen to me, I'd have to get the police involved."

Hamilton didn't respond to a request for comment on Monday.

In the video he posted, Barnhart doesn't make reference to anyone's ethnicity.

"The only thing they could have twisted is that they did not belong to the pool of the neighborhood as a resident," Barnhart said. "We never discussed Mexico or where anybody was from – absolutely not, absolutely not true."

Keller Williams Chief Executive Gary Keller posted online on July 2 that the company was setting up a task force to come up with plans "to eliminate any racial disparity within our company, our industry, and how we can lead the way in the communities where we live and work."

The following day, the company posted that it was investigating Barnhart's actions in light of the viral video.

Assistant team leader Eric Anderson said Monday that Keller Williams was "retracting the termination of Kim Barnhart," noting that company officials had "some new information and video" about the Raleigh incident.

Anderson said it was clear from the video that the crowd at the pool was breaking rules and behaving poorly and that there was "absolutely no evidence" that Barnhart uttered any racial slurs.

"If you're doing something wrong, own it. Don't make up stories," he said about the crowd at the pool.

Benthuysen's statement said Anderson's comments were premature and that no final decision had been made.