White mob descends on innocent black teen's house; terrorizes family

Dameon Shepard's family, and several others in his North Carolinian community, are demanding answers and action after the teenager was roused from a video game session in the late evening of May 3rd by a knock at his front door, only to face an angry mob of around 15 people, several of whom were armed, demanding to know the whereabouts of a different black teenager and a missing white girl they insisted Shepard had information about.

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On May 3, at about 10 p.m., Dameon Shepard was playing video games when he heard a knock at the door. His mother was sleeping. The teen opened the door, Lea said, to find a group of about 15 white people -- mostly men and three of them armed -- on the porch and walkway of his property. The group "came up like a lynch mob up to the door demanding the Shepards answer their questions," Lea told CNN. They were looking for another black teen and wanted information about a 16-year-old girl who Lea said had run away from home. At the head of the group was Kita, in uniform, and a man who identified himself as the girl's brother but may have been her father, Lea said. "Directly behind them were two armed individuals, one with an assault weapon and one with a shotgun," Lea wrote last week in a letter to David. Dameon Shepard attempted to close the front door on them, but Kita "stuck his foot in the door and refused to let him shut it and kept demanding to come into the home. Dameon became very frightened and hysterical and kept repeating that his name was Dameon," the letter said. Monica Shepard woke up during the confrontation and ordered her son to go back inside, and Kita and others began grilling her, insisting they be allowed to come in, Lea wrote. "As she attempted to close the door, (Kita) placed his foot again and pushed against the door preventing (her) from closing it fully. She repeatedly demanded that they leave," his letter said. The black teen being sought by the group, and the teen's mother, previously lived next door but had moved out of the neighborhood weeks before the incident, Lea told CNN.

The mob eventually dispersed when they realized they were at the wrong house yelling at the wrong people, although many of them returned later, ostensibly in hopes of further action, when they saw police arrive at the Shepards' home (it was actually the Shepards who had called police in order to report the menacing mob).

Despite the report and the armed individuals who were still on the scene on the Shepards' private property when they arrived, the authorities did not arrest or charge anyone until a week later, citing the importance of "diffusing the situation" rather than arresting anyone immediately.

So far two people - the uniformed corrections officer who kept his foot in the Shepards' door so they couldn't close it, and one of the gun nuts - have been charged.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3fK6Zcw