A Mounds, Oklahoma homeowner is under fire after putting up a noose display near a busy highway.
According to Tulsa-based KJRH, Merle Martindale says the display did not have racist intent.
Martindale says he put up the three nooses as a warning to criminals. The man has been a victim to crime before and wanted to take action.
However, commuters driving on Green Country Highway 75 did not see it that way.
In the news clip, driver Terrance Reed. Sr could not believe what he saw.
“If you think of a noose in America, it don’t represent anything about but what used to happened to African Americans,” Reed tells reporters. “He got the right to do what he wants to do, he’s got a right to feel what he wanna feel, but I got a right to be angry about it too, and I’m angry.”
Okmulgee (Okla.) County Sheriff Eddy Rice told reporters that the homeowner broke no laws and could not be punished for the display.
However, since the Aug. 15 report, the display has been removed.
