Lawsuit: Grown woman threatens to 'kneel on' Black 9-year-old's neck and calls him N-word
After a particularly cruel encounter, a 51-year-old New Hampshire woman was accused in a civil rights complaint of telling a Black child she would “kneel on his neck.” The state attorney general’s office announced the charges against Kristina Graper on Thursday, The Associated Press reported initially.
“The complaint, filed in Strafford County Superior Court, alleges that on May 10, 2021, Graper threatened a nine-year-old black child who had been playing in a neighborhood park in Dover, after he accidentally broke a toy that belonged to Graper’s son,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release. The reason he accidentally broke the toy, by the way, is because Graper’s son pushed the other child, causing him to fall on a “foam missile or foam bullet,” an attorney for the 9-year-old’s family said in the complaint identifying him as D.H.
“Afraid, D.H. ran away, but the defendant was able to catch up to him,” the attorney said in the complaint. At that point, Graper is accused of issuing the threat and calling the child the n-word, leaving him “shaking and upset—on the verge of tears,” the attorney wrote in the complaint. The child’s mother called the Dover Police Department when he returned home.
“When police met with the defendant on June 1, 2021, the defendant initially could not recall the incident but then recounted how D.H. broke her child’s toy,” an attorney stated in the complaint. “The defendant denied telling D.H. that she would kneel on his neck, and instead, she recalled stating words to the effect ‘you wonder why you guys get f***ing kneeled on.’
“She also denied calling D.H. a nr but later stated it was because because ‘they’ do not know how to shut their ‘nr pie holes.’”
The kneeling remark appears to be a reference to the death of George Floyd, a Black father murdered in police custody when a white Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes.
D.H.’s family attorney wrote in the suit:
The state attorney’s office said in the release that a civil rights violation allows for a maximum civil penalty of $5,000. “The court may also enjoin further violations of the Civil Rights Act,” officials said. “The complaint and the allegations contained therein are merely accusations that the Civil Rights Unit must prove at a final hearing.”
The attorney for D.H.’s family said he has been “afraid to return to the park and will only do so when other children are there to help keep him safe.”
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