On Sunday, a group of Black anti-violence demonstrators in South Carolina decided to hold a peaceful protest. Although the activists were non-violent, one white woman saw them as a threat and called 911.
According to the Huffington Post, the woman — who identified herself as "Brenda" — called the police from inside a Murphy Express gas station in North Charleston, South Carolina. Brenda called after spotting a group of Black people that included several children standing outside the establishment.
The woman told the 911 operator the demonstrators were "destroying" the outside of the gas station and urged the police to hurry, saying, “It’s like a riot out here,” according to audio obtained by the Charleston City Paper.
Community activist Jonathan Thrower filmed the incident and posted it on Facebook (where he goes by the name Shakem Akhet), and it quickly went viral, of course. The video shows a somewhat crowded gas station but does not feature any footage of anything riot-like.
According to Thrower, the party of anti-violence demonstrators stopped at the gas station after the march to get some drinks for the road. The activist said the group moved outside when the station's cashier asked them to exit the store once Brenda approached their group screaming, "Leave now! Leave now! I’m calling 911."
“Safety issues arose due to people, many of which were young children, being in and around the flow of store traffic, and disruptions to the business were caused by an external emergency fuel stop button being struck numerous times, which shut down all fuel pumps at our site,” the gas station's parent company, Murphy USA, wrote in a statement to Yahoo Lifestyle.
“She is the manager at Murphy’s Gas Station,” Thrower wrote on Facebook of Brenda. “She says she doesn’t care about our money; just leave the store. We stopped there to get the children some drinks after we walked a mile during our rally.”
Murphy USA has not yet confirmed whether Brenda actually works at the station and what her title is if she is an employee. Thrower is calling for a boycott of the gas station and for Brenda to be fired.
By the time police arrived, the group had already moved on, and no report was filed. Thrower said he used the incident as a teachable moment.
“I felt sick when I heard the 911 call,” Thrower said. “A few kids said, ‘Every time we try to do something good, they call the police.’ I kept reassuring them that this was part of conflict resolution and why we walked that day.”
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