Remember that cute kid who ran onto the court to hug Carmelo Anthony last week in New Orleans?
Well, there was a not-so-cute ending for the folks who allowed him to reach the Smoothie King Center floor.
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Arena management fired two employees — an usher and a New Orleans police officer hired to work security — who were "not in place" while working in the section where the boy sat during a March 28 game between the Pelicans and Knicks.
''So, essentially, what happened there is that you get two people who were not doing their responsibilities and that led to a black eye for us as the building operator,” Al Freeman, general manager of the Superdome and Smoothie King Center, told NOLA.com. ''So what we have done since then is, first of all, we obviously replaced those two people who failed to do their jobs — the usher and the police officer.''
In addition, the arena’s entire staff of ushers was forced to watch video of former tennis star Monica Seles being stabbed by someone in the crowd during a match in Hamburg, Germany, in 1993.
Talk about reinforcement.