I want to say that 2020 really has white people wilding wilding, but really the actions of passionate racists typically aren’t terribly surprising in any given year.
In Aloha, Ore., a Black FedEx worker said he found himself on the wrong side of a bigots rampage while he was trying to make deliveries Sunday, and a very angry white man has been arrested and accused of using racial slurs and chasing him down carrying a pellet gun.
KGW 8 reports that 68-year-old Rodney Bryant has been charged with bias crime in the first degree, unlawful use of a weapon and menacing following an altercation where he allegedly stood in the street shouting racial slurs at the delivery driver who was trying his best to mind his own business and drive away.
From KGW:
The FedEx driver was able to drive away but Bryant got in his car and pulled alongside the truck with his car door open, officials said. The FedEx driver could see Bryant had a gun. Bryant continued with the racial slurs and said he was “not afraid to use it,” referring to the gun.
The FedEx driver was able to get away and call 911. Deputies arrested Bryant and recovered a pellet gun, which had no orange tip and was “indistinguishable from a real gun,” deputies said.
The driver, 22-year-old Akiel Horn, told KPTV Sunday that he is “still in shock.”
“I didn’t know it was a BB gun,” he said. “I’m thinking it’s a real gun. The first thing that popped in my mind was, ‘oh, I’m going to die,’ but then I said, ‘no, I’m not’–he gave me enough room to get out, thank God, and I got out.”
Surprising to nobody Black, Bryant’s wife, Joyce Harmon, told reporters that she is “totally stunned” at her husband’s arrest and that he isn’t racist.
“I knew that they had arrested him, which seemed crazy, and then when I saw the posting, I was just flabbergasted,” Harmon told KPTV. “He was concerned about the driver speeding, so he wanted to ask him to slow down and so he found him and did that, but the driver yelled at him and he yelled back.”
She also swears to Anything-but-Black Jesus that Bryant is “a very loving person,” and that he’s certainly “not a bully, he’s not mean, he’s very kind-hearted.”
And because there literally is no situation involving race that white people won’t flip to make themselves out to be the victim, Harmon added: “Now I’m just concerned with the social media posting and everything that now we’re going to start being harassed.”
Of course, Horn wasn’t hearing any of that white nonsense.
“It shouldn’t be a reason where you’re calling me the n-word and or saying you’re not afraid to use your gun–there’s no explanation for that,” he said.
According to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, Bryant is being held at the Washington County Jail on $10,000 bail.