A delivery driver in Atlanta, Georgia, says she is still traumatized after a man pretending to be a police officer pulled a gun on her during one of her deliveries.
The Black woman, who chose to conceal her identity, told local station WSBTV that she specifically picked the neighborhood in the metropolitan Atlanta suburb of Smyrna because she felt safe there until her encounter with the white man, later identified as Chad Diefenderfer.
The incident reportedly took place on Wednesday, June 9, around 4:30 p.m. at a house on Forest View Trail earlier this month. The woman was out delivering packages as she typically has done for the past year. The man who lived in the house confronted the woman, demanding that she show her identification.
“He came around the car, and he had the gun pointed like directly at me. He was telling me that he was a cop,” she explained. “Because I’m a Black woman, and he does have a gun, I’m going to try to give you what you’re asking for. But at the same time, it’s like I knew that wasn’t the procedure, even out of uniform.”
The woman panicked, but was able to dial 911 for help, and when Smyrna police arrived, the 43-year-old man presented officers with an expired badge. They later called into the sheriff’s office in Barbour County, Alabama, where the badge was from, and authorities there said they had no idea who Diefenderfer was.
The delivery woman says she doesn’t know why she was targeted in Diefenderfer’s cruel act. “I don’t. I don’t know what made him feel like that it was OK for him lie to me and say he was a cop.”
The woman says she is still affected by what took place and doesn’t know if she’ll ever be the same again, adding that she fears that what took place on June 9 will happen again. “I still have nightmares. I can still see him pointing the gun at me,” she explained. “I think that’s gonna change my life for the rest of my life because it doesn’t make sense because I was just at work.” Diefenderfer was later arrested and charged with two felony counts before bonding out of jail.
