Interaction with armed demonstrators leaves Raleigh family shaken, angry and sad
By Steve Wiseman
May 10, 2020 02:47 PM, Updated 2 hours 29 minutes ago
https://www.newsobserver.com/article242632046.html
Pushing his two kids in a stroller along Fayetteville Street on Saturday morning, Deonte Thomas wandered into a confrontation with a small group of armed demonstrators that left him fearing for his family 24 hours later.
Videos shot by the protesters and The News & Observer and posted online show one unidentified man from the group, carrying a large pipe wrench and crossing the street at the intersection with Davie Street. He heads straight toward Thomas, his wife and their children in a crosswalk.
“I will question to the end of my days how I reacted or should have reacted,” Thomas, an attorney for the Wake County public defender’s office, told The News & Observer in an interview Sunday.
“Could I have handled things differently? What is going to happen if someone reacts differently toward them? I wish I was cursing and more aggressive with them in some parts of the video but that just gives them ammunition to say ‘Look at this angry black guy out here cursing in the middle of the street in front of his kids.’”
Thomas is not heard cursing in the video. He and his wife, Durham County assistant district attorney Beth Hopkins Thomas, both laughed nervously during the exchange.
When Deonte Thomas first saw the demonstrators walk up Davie Street and turn the corner to Fayetteville Street, Thomas yelled from across the street for them to keep moving and stay away from his family. He said he poked fun at them for carrying weapons.
“They are not protecting themselves,” Thomas said. “They are literally walking around terrorizing people.”
The group of about a dozen people, carrying flags and firearms, were protesting Saturday in opposition to the stay-at-home orders North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper implemented with his executive orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The group drew national attention when some members stopped at a downtown Subway for a meal and their photos taken by The News & Observer circulated on social media.
The white, male demonstrator who met up with Thomas and his family in the crosswalk stuck out his right arm with his palm open. Thomas, who is black, interpreted it as a Nazi salute.
A Raleigh-based pro-Second Amendment group called Blue Igloo, which live-streamed the demonstration and posted it online, has said that the gesture was not a Nazi salute.
Beth Thomas ducked away from the man and asked that he keep his distance. His response isn’t heard on the video.
Deonte Thomas said he heard the following exchange involving his wife: “My wife had told him to back up and he said something to the effect that, well, I can hit you from here. I can get you from here.”
As for their laughter in the video, Deonte and Beth Thomas said Sunday they were trying not to upset their children by reacting with the fear they were actually feeling.
“My son was asking what was happening the whole time,” Beth Thomas said. “We were trying to talk to him and deal with it in a way that wouldn’t scare him at the same time.”
Deonte Thomas heard the demonstrator say something about how he could smell them. On the video, the man is heard saying something is “sweet” a few times before he said, “I can smell you from here.”
“I heard smell and that was something that was reflected in the video,” Deonte Thomas said. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. Something about smelling sweet? That wasn’t something I had heard. I heard smell and I heard something about MLK.”
The Thomases continued across the street away from the man. The protesters moved up Fayetteville Street away from the Thomases
Later Saturday, both Deonte and Beth Thomas posted on their Facebook pages about the incident and how upsetting it was. Some of the responses to their posts were from people who agreed with the demonstrators and found nothing wrong with the man’s actions.
A range of emotions
The Thomases live in downtown Raleigh and take their children on walks in the area often. The interaction occurred near the Wake County Courthouse where Deonte Thomas works.
“What kills me right now is that it’s just so clear,” Beth Thomas said. “To those people and all their supporters on their Facebook group, this is merely entertainment for them, is what this seems like. They are having fun with this whole thing.
“What people really don’t seem to understand is how we view our safety or our children’s safety from now until eternity. Every time something like this happens, this chips away at our sense of security.”
On their Facebook page, a Blue Igloo administrator posted that the MLK comment Deonte Thomas heard was about civil disobedience. The post also denied that the man said the Thomases smelled bad.
Deonte Thomas wasn’t buying any of that on Sunday as he replayed the event over and over in his mind.
“I’m going through being angry about it to being sad about it to being angry about it again,” Thomas said, “to being scared for my son and what possibly could have happened if things had possibly gone another way.”
Read more here:
https://www.newsobserver.com/article242632046.html#storylink=cpy
Yep, only good people. I wonder if the resident neo-nazis from this group have strutting around strapped. Trump's basket of deplorables.
