Crime & Justice

Amazon Worker Injured in New Orleans Attack Will Get Paid Leave After All

MISUNDERSTANDING

A woman who was hit by a truck and shot on New Year’s Day in New Orleans was initially denied paid leave by Amazon. The company says that was a misunderstanding.

Police descend on Bourbon Street after more than a dozen people were killed when a person drove into a crowd of revelers in the early morning hours of New Year's Day.
Michael DeMocker/Getty Images

Outrage arrived swiftly Friday after a report revealed a woman injured in the New Orleans terror attack had been denied a leave of absence from an Amazon warehouse. A spokesperson for the company told the Daily Beast the denial stemmed from her request being filed incorrectly, however, and that the worker—Alexis Scott-Windham, of Mobile, Alabama—has since been approved for paid leave. “We’ve reached out to Ms. Scott-Windham to offer her our full support, including pay, as she recovers from this senseless act of violence,” the spokesperson said. “We wish her a full recovery and look forward to welcoming her back to work once she’s able.” That’s likely a relief for Scott-Windham, a 23-year-old mother who told The Times-Picayune she feared she would be out of job by the time she recovered from a foot injury. She told the New Orleans paper she was shot and had her foot plowed over by the white pickup truck driven by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran with apparent ties to ISIS. “He was coming so fast, there wasn’t any time to move all the way out the way,” she said.

Read it at NOLA.com