WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) - A North Carolina district attorney should not have waited five days to respond to an incident in which authorities say an all-white armed mob went to the wrong home in search of a missing girl, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday.
Chantal Stevens, the interim executive director for the ACLU’s North Carolina chapter, issued the statement regarding the incident and arrest last Friday in the case.
The sheriff’s deputy, Jordan Kita, had led an armed group to the home of Dameon Shepard on May 3, according to James W. Lea, a lawyer for Shepard’s family who is preparing a civil lawsuit. The all-white group tried unsuccessfully to force its way into the home of Shepard, who is black, news outlets reported.
On Friday, New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David said that Kita will be charged with trespassing and breaking and entering. Kita had worked with the New Hanover Sheriff’s Office.
Neither David nor Sheriff Ed McMahon responded immediately Monday afternoon to requests for comment.
Stevens also said the Shepard family shouldn’t have had to hire an attorney and alert the media to “address blatant acts of white supremacy.” She also said that sheriff’s deputies who “took no action on the night of the mob” should be reprimanded.
“Vigilante mobs cannot be permitted to terrorize black communities,” she wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “We know that these mobs often commit horrible killings like the recent murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the thousands of lynchings that preceded his slaying.”
Arbery was a black man who authorities say died at the hands of two white men as he ran through a neighborhood in Georgia in February. No arrests were made until this month after national outrage over the case swelled when video surfaced that appeared to show the shooting.
Kita, the sheriff’s deputy in North Carolina, was looking for Lekayda Kempisty, a 15-year-old girl who was reported missing earlier that day. She was later found safe.
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