White Man in Indiana Shot by African Americans Over Confederate Flag on His Car
(South Bend Tribune) – A man who was shot Thursday while driving through a black neighborhood with the Confederate battle flag is not racist, a friend says.
“I’ve never known him to use any racial slurs,” Cally Baker said Saturday. “Unless someone (provoked) him, I can’t imagine him just blurting out the N-word.”
And the flag?
“It is a Confederate flag, I can attest to that,” Baker said. “But it has a military emblem on it … so it was something he was proud of more or less because of the military aspect of it.”
Baker also disputed accounts that the 28-year-old man, who is white and a reported Army veteran and Arkansas native, threatened the shooter and others with a machete.
“He had absolutely no weapon on him but the machete, and it was in the back of the truck, so he had no way to get to it,” she said.
The incident occurred about 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the 1400 Block of Fassnacht Avenue, near City Cemetery on the near west side.
According to witnesses, the man, driving a white SUV with a Confederate battle flag, pulled into J & J convenience store, got into a verbal exchange with a group of black men and started shouting racial slurs. He also displayed a machete, witnesses said.
The man pulled away, witnesses said, but then stopped and reversed toward the black men, at which point one of them opened fire, hitting him in the cheek and upper back.
The man was later found one block east of the scene, at Fassnacht and Birdsell Street, conscious and standing but bleeding from his wounds.
The Tribune is not naming the man because of the newspaper’s policy against identifying crime victims.
Police were still combing through evidence and witness statements Friday to determine just what had happened.
The shooter has not been caught.
Baker, who has known the man for more than a year, said he was coming to visit her at her home on Birdsell Street when the shooting occurred.
She said he stopped at the convenience store to ask for directions.
“When he pulled up there some guys standing outside started (provoking) him about the flag,” she said. “And I will admit, when (he) is (provoked) he kind of starts to (push) back.”
“They started calling him what we would call white racial slurs,” Baker said, “and that’s when (he) said everything back.”
Baker said she heard the shots from her home a block away, followed by a knock on her door.
“He came up to my door, and when he opened door he said he got shot, and I saw the blood that was in his mouth,” she said.
“At first I was kind of shocked, and then of course it scared me,” she said.
She said the man later “ripped (the flag) off and threw it in his truck” while talking to police.
He is currently resting at home, she said, with a “puffed up” cheek and his arm in a sling.
“He’s still feeling kind of out of it, but I talked to him (Friday) and he said he was feeling OK, just feeling like he got shot,” she said.
The incident occurred in the context of the recent mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
The shooting sparked a nationwide debate about the history and display of the Confederate battle flag, which the gunman had adopted as a symbol of white supremacy.
Baker said she hopes this incident does not “become overblown” as a result.
“The whole situation is kind of crazy,” she said. “I just (don’t) want it to become a huge racial thing.”
http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/man-shot-over-confederate-flag-is-not-racist-friend-says/article_5a58084f-3964-5c8c-af32-0a2378ae1492.html
No comments:
Post a Comment