A Black Houston girl was accused of having a fake $2 bill by a school officer when she was trying to buy lunch last year.
The now 14-year-old Christa McAuliffe Middle School student, Danesiah Neal, was accused of buying chicken nuggets with a fake $2 bill. However, the officer overreacted and took the teen out of lunch.
“I went to the lunch line and they said my $2 bill was fake,” Neal told Ted Oberg Investigates. “They gave it to the police. Then they sent me to the police office. A police officer said I could be in big trouble.”
Danesiah did not get a chance to eat that day. The cop also went back to the convenience store where the bill originated. It turns out the bill was real.
“He brought me my $2 bill back,” the teen’s grandmother Sharon Kay Joseph said. “He didn’t apologize. He should have, and the school should have because they pulled Danesiah out of lunch and she didn’t eat lunch that day because they took her money.”
According to an investigative report last week from Houston’s ABC 13, this incident joins a troubling trend of white authority figures accusing Black school children of having counterfeit money.
The Fort Bend Independent School District has had eight counterfeiting charges investigated against high and middle-school students since the 2013-2014 school year.
No charges were filed against Neal. However, other students accused of forgery could face up to two to 10 years in prison.
