A Florida man was jailed on aggravated assault charges after he allegedly pointed a gun at his Black neighbor and several children while calling them racial slurs.
Darius Brock told WJAX that his children were outside playing with their cousins and a few other neighborhood kids on April 15 when James Odneal came outside and began hurling threats.
Cell phone footage shows parts of the encounter, and Odneal is heard yelling in the background.
“I am racist!” 40-year-old Odneal is heard shouting at the kids.
Brock’s son ran into the house and told his father what happened.
“My son came in and said an older guy, our neighbor, was screaming at them and called them the N-word,” Brock said.
Brock’s son also said Odneal started shouting that he was going to “break the fence down” and “let the dog bite all of our N-word, with the hard R.”
Brock and his wife went outside to confront Odneal, but the situation only escalated.
“I asked him, like, ‘What’s the problem? Why are you saying this?’” Brock said. “He was saying the ball was hitting his gate and it was making his dogs bark.”
Brock said that’s when Odneal whipped out a gun and pointed it directly at Brock and his children. The children, all between the ages of five and 11, immediately ran away and started crying.
“We all ran, and we ran away, and my dad was helping us jump the fence, and we just went home, and we was hiding,” Brock’s son, 10-year-old Milo, said.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office arrested Odneal shortly after the incident. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without the intent to kill.
Brock said the children are still shaken by what happened.
“They were in tears, crying, all night. My kids, they could barely sleep. Like it just traumatized them,” Brock said.
“I’m scared still, because I don’t know if he’s gonna try to do something,” Milo said.
Jail records show Odneal bonded out of jail two days after the incident, after paying a $15,000 bail. He’ll return to court in May.
A similar case out of Florida ended in the arrest of an 81-year-old woman who was charged with a felony for allegedly hurling racial slurs and spraying bear mace at two young Black girls, ages 3 and 6, who were merely blowing bubbles outside.
