A Black Florida teen took to social media earlier this week to share a video of him encountering racial discrimination while driving through a neighborhood where his friend lived.
“I was racially profiled while driving through my [friend’s] neighborhood,” the caption begins.
“They didn’t like the way I was driving, so they felt the need to hit my car with a cone and throw a rock through my window. All I wanted to do was de-escalate until the police came because I wasn’t about to get charges pressed on me for no reason,” he wrote.
Videos and photos show his vehicle with the back window smashed, with visible dents and scratches underneath.
The video appears to capture the event’s aftermath, with Jermaine (who isn’t visible on camera) recording the damage to his car. Four white, middle-aged residents can be seen yelling at him while he records, with two of the men approaching the teen aggressively.
One of the men said Jermaine was “burning out, racing through [his] fucking neighborhood.”
While the teen told another man yelling at him to “get out of [his] face.”
“I’m not in your face,” the man says. “Get out of my neighborhood,” he yells.
Shortly after, there must have been talk of a weapon before the video started since Jermaine, who appears to be alone in the situation, says, “Who got the gun?”
“You’re the one that would get the gun,” the white woman said.
Jermaine issued an update after the video went viral on social media, stating that two of the men in the video had been arrested.
The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office issued their mugshots, and the individuals were identified as Donald Eugene Corsi and Howard Oral Hughes, and they are both facing felony charges.
On Wednesday, a woman claiming to be Jermaine’s sister tweeted about the ordeal.
“Yesterday, my 16-year-old brother was racially profiled in a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida, the same city as Trayvon Martin. Luckily, he had a different fate. I commend my brother for how he reacted to the situation. They tried to throw a brick at his head, And missed.”
