Police in Lincoln, Nebraska have arrested a white man who is suspected of making terroristic threats and yelling racial slurs at a Black woman while waving a chainsaw.
According to KOLN, Norma Nimox was entering her home on Saturday afternoon when Daniel Stueck allegedly confronted her. The woman said she was about halfway up the stairs when she first noticed a man standing in a window on the second floor of the apartment complex, holding a chainsaw.
“I’m standing in the middle part of the stairs and he’s sitting at the top of the stairs," the 25-year-old told KOLN. "Excuse my language because it’s about to get vulgar. He says 'what's up n****r.'”
The 41-year-old man allegedly revved up the engine of the chainsaw and waved it towards the woman while yelling racial slurs and told her to get off "his property." According to Nimox, Stueck then chased her down the stairs with the chainsaw and continued to pursue her until they got to the end of the property.
Stueck was later arrested on suspicion of making terroristic threats and booked with a hate crime enhancement, meaning the penalty for the crime if convicted, will be more severe as the crime was spurred by bigotry. The suspect, who doesn't actually own the building, said he has been the victim of recent thefts and he blames Black people.
“She was guilty because she was Black,” Stueck told police, referring to Nimox.
The tenant said she is now concerned for the safety of herself and her 5-year-old son, as well as the whole complex. Nimox said she has spoken to her landlords, but they haven’t confirmed whether or not the man will be allowed to return to the property.
“It’s something that you hear in movies,” the distraught mother said. “Being chased with a chainsaw, it’s just unreal.”
The terrifying incident in Lincoln is the latest example of Black people facing racial harassment in their own homes. As Blavity previously reported, a white woman in Discovery Bay, California showed up to the home of her Black neighbors last month to complain about their dog and threatened them with a stun gun, telling them to "act like white people."
“I don’t want to see that dog outside,” Adana Dean told the Jones family. “You guys are acting like Black people, and you should act like white people. You’re acting like people that aren’t normal.”
In September, a white man with two machetes threatened to kill his Black neighbor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, The Gazette reported. Police said Gary A. Knebel dropped his machetes when officers arrived and blamed his Black neighbor for making "racist comments toward him as he was attempting to remove a tree stump.”
Last year, ProPublica published a document titled Documenting Hate. According to the research, people of various races and religions reported more than 300 cases of harassment by their neighbors in a two-year span. A majority of the cases involved anti-Black hate crimes.
