WOODSTOCK, Va. (AP) — A sheriff has apologized to a black pastor who described being arrested when he called 911 on a group of white people who threatened to kill him after trying to dump a refrigerator on his property in Virginia.
Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter made the apology to Leon K. McCray Sr. of Woodstock Friday, announcing hate crime and assault charges against the five people involved and saying a weapons charge against the pastor would be dropped.
McCray said they threatened him and returned with three more people, attacking him physically, saying “they don’t give a darn” about “my black life and the Black Lives Matter stuff,” and telling him they would “kill” him.
McCray said the deputies rushed to judgment, “disarming a black male brandishing a gun against five white individuals” despite his “second Amendment right to defend myself against five attackers that tried to take my life.”
Attorney Bradley G. Pollock, representing Sharp, told The Washington Post that his client and Amanda Salyers assumed they had permission to dump the refrigerator in McCray’s dumpster, and returned it to their own property after McCray confronted them.
