A black man was sitting in his car trying to get his inner peace on when a pressed white woman approached him.
According to Fox 11, Ezekiel Phillips dropped off a friend in a Long Beach, California, neighborhood on May 30 and decided to rest a bit before going to his yoga class.
To get his mind right for his class, Phillips said he popped a Bikram yoga CD into his car's stereo. Then he was approached by a white woman.
Phillips said the woman told him, “'You’re not supposed to be here. This is a good neighborhood.'"
He said he responded, "I’m like, ‘Wait, hold up. Have a good day, ma’am. Namaste.' And I rolled my window up."
Undeterred, the woman whipped out her phone, and the situation got tense.
“She took her phone out; started taking pictures, filming, doing whatever she was doing. Hey, I went to film school. I can take film, as well. So I got out the car, I started filming her; as soon as I start filming her, ‘What are you doing? Leave me alone! I’m feeling threatened. Help! Help!’ It was one of those,” Phillips said.
In true Becky fashion, the woman called the police.
“I noticed him two houses up from my parents’ house, and I’m like, you know and he’s waving to me. I don’t know who he is,” the woman can be heard saying on 911's audio recording of the call.
The woman also told the 911 operator, “I go, ‘Why are you sitting in your car in our neighborhood? And he goes, ‘I’m resting,’ and I’m like you weren’t two blocks back.”
Phillips said he initially started to leave, but decided to stay, fearing going would seem to the police like an admission of guilt. He began to follow the woman as she talked to the authorities.
“I can’t get away from him! Get away from me!” she shouted.
The woman could not be reached for comment. Officers from the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) eventually showed up but made no arrests and filed no report.
LBPD said the woman was within her rights to call the police and stressed if residents see something, they should say something.
Phillips disagrees and believes this incident should have been a lesson.
“It’s no longer cool to allow your discomfort to say that my discomfort is more valuable than the potential fact that this call, your life can be taken,” Phillips said. “You don’t have to call 911 on me. Talk to me. Ask me my name.”
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