Is it just me or are Karens getting more Karen-y by the day?
In Aiken, S.C., a white woman has been charged with assault and battery in the third degree after she put her hands on an 11-year-old black girl who she falsely accused of stealing her mail.
According to the Augusta Chronicle, Alice Patterson sent her granddaughter, Skhylur Davis, to get her mail on May 11. Patterson said she’s sent Skhylur on this errand many times but, on this day, she had the unfortunate experience of standing in front of a white woman’s house while holding the mail she picked up for her grandmother. That’s when 38-year-old Elizabeth Shirey came out of her house to yell at Skhylur, accusing the 11-year-old of stealing her mail. Shirey eventually realized she was wrong after she saw that the address on the mail Skhylur was holding didn’t match hers—but before that happened, she got herself charged with assault after she “grabbed Skhylur by her arms and pulled them,” according to a report by the Aiken Department of Public Safety.
According to the ADPS report, Shirey’s husband, Justin, involved himself in the altercation. Skhylur said he was rude to her and another minor who was on the scene and, after realizing she had done nothing wrong, he told her that things would’ve gone differently if she was of a different “type.” Justin didn’t use any slurs or mention race specifically, but as Skhylur said in a news conference: “You don’t have to think about what type he meant.”
The family’s lawyer, Justin Bamberg, spoke on the incident in a Zoom news conference.
“We shouldn’t have to sit here and have this discussion in 2020, in South Carolina on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery down in Brunswick, Ga., a situation which the world is very much familiar,” Bamberg said. “Right here in Aiken, S.C., we have another victim and this time, the charge is assault and battery. The victim, unfortunately, is an 11-year-old girl.
“Mrs. Shirey happens to see this young child by her mailbox and proceeds to come out of her home, yell at this 11-year-old girl,” he continued. “Mrs. Shirey runs aggressively towards this 11-year-old child accusing her of committing a felony, stealing her mail. After realizing that Shkylur had not done anything wrong, this woman proceeds to offer her cookies, as though that makes things better.”
The moral of this story is clear: Keep your hands to yourself; nobody wants your mail or your racism-apology cookies, Karen.