History has an odd way of repeating itself, and one Black FedEx driver in Brookhaven, Mississippi unfortunately found himself in a similar situation as the late Ahmaud Arbery after his delivery van was shot at and chased down by a white father and his son that thought he looked “suspicious.”
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According to a recent report by the Mississippi Free Press, 24-year-old FedEx worker D’Monterrio Gibson told the outlet that he was simply delivering a package around 7PM on January 24 in a Hertz-branded rental when he spotted a white pickup truck driving uncomfortably close and attempting to cut him off. After swerving to avoid colliding with the guy, he made it about three houses up the block before another person stood in the middle of the street to block him off while pointing a gun at the vehicle.
Read below to get the full recollection from Gibson himself, via the Mississippi Free Press:
“‘In my mind I’m thinking (the driver) is leaving to go to the store or something like that, but then they get extremely close to me and start blowing their horn,’ Gibson said. ‘I proceed to leave the driveway. As I’m leaving the driveway, he starts driving in the grass trying to cut me off. My instincts kick in, I swerve around him, and I start hitting the gas trying to get out of the neighborhood because I don’t know what his intentions are.
I drive down about two or three houses. There’s another guy standing in the middle of the street pointing a gun at my windows and signaling to me to stop with his hands, as well as mouthing the word, ‘Stop.’ I shake my head no, I hide behind the steering wheel, and I swerve around him as well. As I swerve around him, he starts firing shots into my vehicle.’
As Gibson drove toward the end of the street, Gibson said, one of his managers at FedEx called him, and he told her what was happening.
”They’re shooting at you?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, head back to the station as soon as you can,’’ she said as Gibson recounted.
As he was trying to make his way out of Brookhaven, Gibson said he noticed the white pickup truck was following him from behind.
‘I just went as fast as I could. He chased me all the way to the interstate,’ he said.
Once he was about 10 or 15 minutes down the interstate and the white pickup was no longer following him, Gibson said he called another manager and told him what had happened. The manager told him they would file a police report the next morning.
But Gibson called dispatch to report the incident himself.”
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What followed afterwards made Gibson feel victimized all over again, this time by the authorities who should’ve been in place to protect him. Instead, he was cut off by the dispatcher as he tried to tell the story, told they received a report of a “suspicious person” at the address he originally made the delivery to and to save the rest of the story for a supervising officer. Later, after he and a FedEx manager went to the Brookhaven Police Department to file the police report, he was asked by a white cop if he was “doing anything to make them think (he) looked suspicious.”
After further investigation, which saw Gibson return to the scene of the crime with officers, revealed that the two men who shot at and chase him down were 58-year-old Gregory Case and his son, 35-year-old Brandon Case. Both men, who happen to be white, eventually turned themselves in last week (Feb 1), with Gregory being charged with conspiracy and Brandon getting slapped with an aggravated assault charge for firing the weapon. Both men posted bond from Lincoln County Jail the next day.
Gibson, who’s currently on unpaid time-off after FedEx assigned him to the route again and he refused due to very reasonable worry, not only wants the FBI and Mississippi Bureau of Investigations to open an official investigation but also ask the U.S. Department of Justice treat this as a hate crime. We couldn’t agree more.
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Black FedEx Driver Demands Hate Crime Charges For White Father/Son Duo That Shot At His Truck was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
