A VFR reader has two very close calls with violent blacks

(Note: See, below, Laura Wood’s disturbing account of how she let two “contractors” into her house who were not contractors.)

Richard Bartholomew writes:

I have two incidents of black on white crime that have occurred to me recently, which I would like to share with your readers. There’s a Derbyshire rule in the first, and I think it is also apropos to your discussion of a common reaction of blacks to a self-assured white man.

1. The first occurred on the last Monday or Tuesday of this past July. I was driving late that afternoon through the inner city of Columbus, Ohio and had turned down a side street on my way back home. Although two-way, the street is narrow and has cars parked along both sides, leaving space for just one car to pass. Normally, there are enough breaks in the lines of parked cars on either side of the street that, in the case of oncoming traffic, one or the other driver can pull between the parked cars and let the other pass.

As I came to the end of the street, I noticed a pick-up truck sitting ahead in the sole, open lane of traffic. While there was a break in the parked cars directly beside him, there were no breaks on either side of the road between us. The driver, a black man accompanied by his white girlfriend, was leaning out of the truck, speaking with a white man on the side of the road. This isn’t unusual in the area. Typically, I simply wait for thirty to sixty seconds, and the driver moves on.

This time, however, the driver remained. I saw him glance at me, thus I knew he was aware of my presence. Rather than moving on, he simply continued talking. I waited for a couple of minutes, and then I’d had enough. I honked on the horn and motioned for him to pull over into the spot between the parked cars beside him, reasoning he could finish his conversation there and allow me to pass.

He glared at me, and turned back to the conversation. The white man looked uneasily in my direction. I waited for a moment longer, and then I got out of my car. I called out to him, putting into words what I had suggested with gestures. Now he was irate, motioning for me to back up, as if expecting I drive in reverse down the street to the next intersection in order to go around him. I asked him if he seriously expected me to do this so that he could continue parking in the middle of a road he had no right to obstruct. And that’s when he appeared to lose it. He started gesticulating wildly and looking for something in the console between him and his girlfriend. She looked panicked, slapping at his hands, at which time I realized he must be looking for a gun or maybe a knife. For some reason, stupidity or anger, I just stood there, watching. Finally, he gave up and roared his truck in reverse, back down the street to a break in the parked cars further behind him—for some reason avoiding the obvious and more convenient break I had suggested and which had been directly beside him. I heard him scream “Mark, mark” at me while he did. As I approached his truck to drive by him, he screamed at me that I was a “marked man” and I shouldn’t be “down here,” apparently assuming from my dress, I guess, that I lived in the suburbs. As I drove away, I started shaking, realizing only then just how close I had come to being shot.

2. That first incident should have prepared me better for the second and most recent. Some of us, I guess, are just slow learners. I have to install new fixtures on my bathtub and have been waiting for the specially ordered parts to come in. In the meantime, I have sometimes showered at my parents’ house which is in the same, inner-city neighborhood, not far from where I live.

This past Wednesday, my parents had already left for church, and only my younger sister was there, watching TV in the living room. I stopped by to take a shower. After a few minutes, I heard some commotion outside the bathroom. Figuring it was just my sister, trying to move something too heavy for her, I continued my shower, in no particular rush. I dried off, and, for the sake of my sister, got dressed before going out to see what was going on.

She wasn’t in the living room. I found out later, she had left for church while I was in the shower and for whatever reason had not locked the door. I thought I heard some noise upstairs, so I went up to see what she was up to and to let her know I would be leaving soon for church. Half-way up the stairs, I smelled a strong odor of cigarette smoke and body odor. Now, I don’t know why at this point I wasn’t alarmed. I certainly should have been, but I just waved it away, failing completely even to try to make sense of the strange smell. I had wanted to comb my hair in an unfogged mirror anyway, and so I went into the upstairs bathroom, directly across from the top of the stairs. I glanced in the mirror, and hearing much more noise in my parents’ bedroom, rather than my sister’s, I stepped outside of the bathroom to investigate.

There stood a young, wiry black man with his back to me, in the bedroom door. Now, again, at this point, I certainly should have been alarmed. Yet, strangely refusing to see the obvious danger, I guess, my first thought was, Why did my parents let one of the kids (the kids they work with as part of the inner-city mission they started) in the house. I’ve said a thousand times … And it was then he turned around, and I saw his arms cradling my father’s hunting guns. I froze, finally realizing what was happening, though still slowly. I had no idea what to do.

He was a light-skinned black man, with noticeably Caucasian facial features, likely very mixed. He was around 5’8” and wiry, maybe 150 pounds. He wore dreads, which seemed pressed down from the top, and he had on a dirty grey shirt with some design or logo on it, I think, and brownish pants. His eyes were deadened, and the entire atmosphere around him suggested to me that he thought he was scavenging, casually taking what he wanted. There was no discernible concern or anxiety in his demeanor.

Flatly, he told me if I moved (or said anything? He didn’t say that part clearly), he’d “pop my ass”—that I understood.

Not knowing if my father kept his guns loaded, I had no idea what to do. He was only a few feet away. If I lunged, I doubted he could swing one of the hunting rifles around at me. What if he dropped them and knifed me? I wondered if I should just punch him instead. Before I could think another thought, he dashed down the stairs. Now at least, I realized what to do. I took off running after him. He had already made it out the kitchen door, and I could hear him trying to work the action on my father’s guns. I froze. Again, I didn’t know if my father had them loaded. Realizing for the first time how vulnerable I was unarmed, I dashed over to the downstairs bathroom where I had showered and left my cellphone.

I made it back to the kitchen in time to see the brown SUV they were driving pull out of my parents’ driveway. I ran to the front door where I could get a look at the SUV as it drove down the street in front of the house, hoping to see the license plate. The driver glowered at me, and as he passed, I realized to my disappointment, that they had removed the license plate.

I can’t tell you Mr. Auster, how furious I was with myself, to have failed so miserably to defend my parents’ house. Having been raised in a pacifist home, self-defense training was forbidden us, and I never played a physical contact sport. I hadn’t realized until Wednesday just how completely unprepared I was to defend myself physically. From the first incident, I should have learned the necessity of a gun and obtained a concealed carry permit. Now I know I’ll have to invest in my self-defense courses as well. On either occasion, I could easily have been killed.

I wanted you and your readers to know what happened for two reasons: First, the news is here. I’ve read your blog for years, and while intellectually recognizing the existence of black-on-white crime and its implications, in my heart I just lacked that fighting spirit and still, even up to this past Wednesday, held some small seed of doubt and therefore guilt about asserting myself as a white man in the face of blacks. It took living the news, I guess, to free me completely from that. Second, the injustice against my parents won’t be reported in our big-city paper. I wanted this injustice to be chronicled somewhere, and to the extent it can persuade intellectually at least another, it is well reported.

Thank you for your blog. Although I didn’t act effectively in either situation to stop the threat, I did not act weakly or fearfully either. I credit your blog with that, and I do wonder if the thief sensed my lack of fear and that to some extent it discouraged him, who though significantly smaller than I might have been armed, from risking a physical altercation, which could have cost me my life.

- end of initial entry -

Laura Wood writes:

Mr. Bartholomew’s story of the incident at his parents’ house reminded me of something that happened to me last winter——-and of another important safety rule.

We needed to repair our chimney and were interested in looking for a contractor to do it when a man called and said his chimney repair company was going to be in our neighborhood and was interested in any work we might need done. I said, as a matter of fact we were looking for someone and they could come by and take a look at the chimney. I told him to have his workers call before they came and gave him my cell phone number. He sounded very eager, which didn’t alarm me. I was at the store a couple of hours later when I got a few calls on my cell phone but could not answer them. When I pulled into our driveway, a van was there and two men, one white and the other black, were standing outside.

I needed to show them a leak inside in order to explain the problem with the chimney. It never once occurred to me that I should never let someone in the house unless I know he is from a real company. The white man came in and the black man went up on the roof. Instead of just inspecting the chimney, I could hear him walking back and forth on the roof, over to that part of the house far from the chimney and above our bedrooms. I came outside to ask him to be careful where he was walking (parts of the roof are fragile) and he looked at me with a strange smile. I guess I thought he was walking back and forth just to kill time while his partner talked to me.

I went back inside, finished talking with the white man, who gave me a very long and detailed explanation of what we needed to have done and of the price. Nothing seemed strange in his manner or sales pitch. I said I would let them know later and I then let him out of the house. A few minutes later, the black man, who was about six feet tall, came walking right in the front door. He didn’t knock. He just walked right in, which in my experience is unusual for contractors. I was taken aback and walked toward the door to see what he wanted. He asked me for a plastic bag, saying that they were cleaning out their “filter” and needed a trash bag. I said, no, I didn’t have any plastic bags. He walked down the hallway toward the kitchen and said, “You don’t have anything? Are you sure? You must have something. You must have some kind of plastic bag.”

At this point, I was becoming uneasy. I rummaged very quickly through a cabinet and found a bag. I gave it to him and started walking toward the front door, as if to show him out. He very slowly walked toward the front door, so slowly that I just left him in the hallway because it was awkward to be standing there. He stopped and looked at the name of a bakery on the bag. “Interesting. That looks like a good bakery. I’ve never been to that one. Hmm.” He then just stood there looking at the bag and saying nothing, as if he was deciding what to do next. He wore a half-smile, as if he was enjoying himself immensely.

At this point, I just wanted to get out of the house. I turned and quickly walked out the back door, leaving him in the house, and stood in the driveway. I waited for a minute or so and then he came out the front door. He walked down the path toward the driveway. I went back into the house and locked the doors.

A few minutes later they drove away.

Police in the area announced the same day that men who met the same description, who were driving the same type of van and who were part of the same fake company had robbed a house. One man went into the bedroom and stole jewelry while the other talked to the homeowner.

LA to Laura Wood:

You let two strange men into your house because they said they were from a chimney repair company? You’re lucky nothing bad happened.

Laura Wood replies:

I know. I’m usually very cautious.

It was the fact that someone called that threw me off. If they had showed up at my door, I wouldn’t have let them in.

Buck writes:

Wow. I have to say that these three stories are studies in exactly what not to do. They leave me with a very uneasy feeling.

Mr. Bartholomew should never have gotten out of his vehicle, not unless he was armed and prepared to fire his weapon in self defense, a defense that he would have difficulty arguing, since he was the aggressor, not his the cretin who was sitting still in his vehicle. What more did Mr. Bartholomew need to know? There was an recalcitrant black man obstinately blocking his way on a narrow inner city street. Excuse me, but extract your foolish ass from the situation. Don’t escalate it by walking up to and challenging your potential assailant. Back up and suck it up, or be prepared to defend yourself with deadly force. Was there any doubt that the man knew that he was blocking the road? Were you going to ‘splain it to him? How in the world could exiting your vehicle (your only means or escape and protection) and approaching while unarmed and on foot, a strange black man who is at the wheel of his idling truck and in control of you? Either your mentally and physically equipped to deal with this black man, deal with whatever he does, or you don’t leave you vehicle and you certainly don’t confront or challenge him. You were very lucky.

The second story makes me think that Mr. Bartholomew is at a seriously high level of risk. He obviously has no innate survival instincts. If I smelled a strong odor of cigarette smoke and body odor, and I was unaccustomed to my sister presenting that way, I think that some level of instinct should kick in. Not being alarmed is a symptom of something that needs fixing. Why aren’t we raising our voice and calling out to see who will answer? Upon seeing an uninvited, unannounced, unknown black man upstairs on the second floor of his house at his parents bedroom door Mr. Bartholomew doesn’t retreat, doesn’t attack and doesn’t even hide. Then when the intruder turns around with his father’s rifles in his arms, Mr. Batholomew, who for whatever bizarre reason, has no idea if the weapons that his father and mother keep in their bedroom are kept loaded or not? He doesn’t even know whether the weapons in his own house are loaded? My God.

That the man left without harming Mr. Batholomew may have been a function of his instincts. He probably realized that, forgive me, that Mr. Batholomew was brain-dead. That he was not going to function in any way that could harm him. So he simply went past his frozen body and on his way.

The contradictions, not untruths mind you, but the mental contradictions are startling. A pacifist home with rifles, rifles that may or may not be kept loaded, and an adult male who has no idea what to do with one, even if he had to save his own life, or the life of his sister or parents.

Talk about low hanging fruit.

Mrs. Wood, please, never let anyone in your house unless you called them, and then only if you know them or if someone you know and trust knows and trusts them. Anyone can call to see who will invite them in. I would suggest that you never open the door to a strange man unless you have protection or some kind of plan. And I would also protect my cell phone number. Give only your land line until you check them out. And when the guy came into you house uninvited, you should have exited quickly and dialed 911. Forget about being embarrassed by running out, that’s temporary. Let the police teach him some manners.

October 8

David B. writes:

If Richard Barthomolew doesn’t smarten up, he is not long for this world. We’ve seen many horrors were people made similar mistakes.

George Zimmerman got out of his vehicle after seeing a strange black male and losing sight of him. Had he stayed inside, he could have waited until a police car arrived and he would not have been forced to shoot his attacker.

Remember the Columbia Journalism student? She saw a strange black male in the hall. When she opened the door to her apartment, he forced his way in and tortured her for hours.

Laura Wood writes:

One other detail I had forgotten: the person who initially called me was not a man, but a woman. Then a man got on the phone to explain who they were.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 07, 2012 03:03 PM | Send