A Black Michigan woman who drove onto a white man’s lawn to avoid a flooded street is pushing back against a viral doorbell-camera video of the scream fest that followed.
She claims the man hurled racial slurs at her, and that the footage doesn’t tell the whole story.
The unnamed homeowner first spoke to Fox 2 Detroit and downplayed the confrontation, saying race had nothing to do with it.
“I know a lot of the comments on Instagram were racial, and I did not appreciate that,” he said.
“Had nothing to do with race. It was just two people at the moment who had a misunderstanding. I have no ill will toward this person. I forgive her. No damage was done to my property other than the rut in the grass, and that can be fixed.”
In her first public comments since the footage emerged, Lacie (who did not use her last name) flatly disputed the man’s claim that race had nothing to do with it.
She told Fox 2 that he hit her car with his hand and went on a profanity-laced tirade against her, including derogatory racial terms. “He said some very nasty stuff,” she told the outlet.
Lacie also pushed back on the part of the video that went viral in the first place: her telling the man, “You’re about to die.” She claims the line was a misunderstanding.
The man visibly shakes from Parkinson’s disease, and she says she was telling him to calm down, not threatening his life. “I said, ‘You need to calm down, you’re about to die. As in, ‘you’re old.’” She admitted she also told him, “You are one sneeze from hugging Jesus,” adding, “that was not nice at all… I do feel bad for saying that.”
After the video went viral, Lacie received an onslaught of racial harassment on social media, with some strangers threatening to show up at her workplace.
Lacie apologized for driving on the man’s lawn, but says the footage cropped out the reason she swerved.
According to her, another neighbor was across the street in standing water clearing out a catch basin to help drain the flooded road, and she drove down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.
The man had his phone out recording during the entire confrontation, Lacie said, but has yet to release the footage. She’s confident it proves there were no death threats on her part and is calling on him to share it publicly.
Despite the harassment that followed, Lacie said she’s still willing to make things right.
She didn’t realize the video had gone viral until she saw a Fox 2 news segment about it, but she remains open to apologizing directly to the homeowner for driving on his lawn if he’s willing to talk. Because he is an “elder,” she said, “I would grant him that grace.”
