A white woman is being charged with third-degree assault and battery after she accused a Black 11-year-old girl of stealing her mail, according to the Daily Mail.

Elizabeth Shirey, 38, confronted Skhylur Davis as she was gathering the mail for her grandmother, Alice Patterson, on May 11 in a South Carolina neighborhood. While the girl was with a group of other children, Shirey grabbed Skhylur and snatched the mail from her.

However, after realizing the mail was not, in fact, stolen and didn't belong to her, Shirey apologized and attempted to offer the 11-year-old cookies.

WRDW reported that Shirey's husband also approached the group to intervene and said, "If you were a different type of guy, then this would have been another story," according to Skhylur.

While his comments were left to be interpreted, Skhylur said during a press conference that "you don't have to think about what type he meant."

Police arrived on the scene soon after, however, Shirey wasn't taken into custody due to fear of the coronavirus spreading in jails.

Justin Bamberg, Skhylur's lawyer, said the 11-year-old thinks it's sad that Black people are often killed and wrongly accused. She also said during a press conference that she wasn't scared during the incident and previously targeted violence against Black people influenced her reaction to the situation.

"I wasn't scared because in this type of situation, you need to do anything but be scared," Skhylur said. "It shouldn't be like this and it's wrong."

Skhylur said the incident is an example of the violence caused by white people who feel the need to take the law into their own hands and wrongly accuse Black people of committing crimes.

Bamberg referenced the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, who was followed by two white men in a pickup truck after being accused of stealing from a housing construction site on February 23. In a recorded video, Arbery is seen being shot to death on a street in Brunswick, Georgia, as Blavity previously reported.

"Now, where are we at as a society — forget race, forget ethnicity, forget gender, forget sexual preference — where are we at as a society when an 11-year-old child has to be cognizant of that when she's interacting with a grown woman?" Bamberg said.

Bamberg is hoping the case goes through the criminal justice system and wants to make an example out of Shirey.

"We want the criminal justice system, in this instance in Aiken County, to make an example out of [the woman] to deter other people from ever doing the same thing again," Bamberg said.

Patterson said the situation was hurtful and unacceptable.

"We're hurt, we're upset, and we're angry. She's angry and hurt. She was violated," she said. "Growing up in the South, we had to endure this; our parents had to endure this. It's 2020. We will not have our children go through what we had to go through."

Applauding Skhylur's actions, District 5 Councilwoman Andrea Neira Gregory said she was proud of her.

"I just want you to know that we are proud of you. I can tell that based on what your attorney said that you are an amazing young lady and your family has a lot of reasons to be proud of you," Gregory said.

"Keep your head up, this will pass, but we appreciate the awareness you are creating in our society, specifically, the city of Aiken, where this should never be tolerated," she added.

Elizabeth-Shirey

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