Two white men in Florida have been arrested for allegedly launching a rock into a Black teen’s car while he was visiting friends in their suburban neighbourhood, according to authorities.
Donald Eugene Corsi, 52, and Howard Oral Hughes, 61, were arrested on Wednesday for an incident that took place on Tuesday in Sanford, Seminole County court records show.
The suburban city, located about a half hour drive outside of Orlando, is also the same location where Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was fatally gunned down by George Zimmerman more than a decade ago.
According to the county records and social media video of the incident, 16-year-old Jermaine Jones was driving through a residential neighbourhood when the two men allegedly threw a traffic cone at his car and a large rock through the back window into the backseat.
In an Instagram video recorded by the teen victim, he surveyed the damage to his white Mercedes sedan and the aftermath of the confrontation with the two alleged attackers.
Shards of glass from the back window are seen strewn across the backseat and litter the interior of the teen’s car, including a red backpack, while a rock the size of a bowling ball sits in a seat.
“Right here! Tell me what you’ve done!” one of the men wearing sunglasses shouts at the teen, while he continues filming with his cellphone. In a caption for the video on Jermaine’s Instagram, which has since been deactivated, he wrote: “I was racially profiled while driving through my friends neighbourhood.”
He added that he believed the two men “didn’t like the way I was driving”, which then led to them allegedly launching a traffic cone and a rock at his car. The teen said that he wanted to remain at the scene until police arrived, and that all he “wanted to do was de-escalate” the situation.
The second man in the video then joins the first man in sunglasses and begins admonishing Jermaine, saying that “he told [him] not to” burnout, before he starts walking the teen’s direction.
“Get out my face,” Jermaine mumbles as the man shouting appears just inches away from the camera.
A few seconds later, the teen can be heard asking about which of the residents in the area has a gun.
“The guy who has a permit to carry,” says a man off-camera, who can’t be identified in the footage.
A separate video was later shared by Jermaine’s father, CJ Jones, who went live on Facebook to record the incident after police had been called to the scene.
Mr Jones, who mentions that on his drive over to the neighbourhood he had a “couple people yell at me”, says the motivation for him recording the scene after the confrontation was so that he had evidence, “in case something happens to me out here today”.
“Black people cannot stay around here,” he mutters in the video after showing the home where his son had been visiting a friend.
“Not too far from where Trayvon Martin got killed,” the teen’s father wrote alongside the video, highlighting the 2012 shooting of the 17-year-old boy who was shot while he was walking back to his father’s fiancé’s house from a nearby convenience store that spurred rallies, protests and calls for police reform across the nation.
Both men face charges of a third-degree felony of damage to property, while Mr Corsi was separately charged with hurling a weapon into a vehicle. Mr Hughes was also charged with a first-degree misdemeanour for battery, because the traffic cone allegedly hit the teen as he sat behind the wheel.
At the time the objects were allegedly thrown at the car, both Jermaine and his 15-year-old friend were inside the car.
Mr Corsi and Mr Hughes have since been released from the Seminole jail on bond.
The next court appearance for the men has not been announced.
The Independent could not immediately reach Mr Corsi or Mr Hughes for comment and has reached out to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
