With tears streaming down his cheeks, a 9-year-old black
child spoke out at a community meeting in New York about being wrongly accused
of grabbing a white woman's backside in a corner store -- an incident disproved
by security-camera footage.
With his mother standing beside him, Jeremiah Hervey
delivered a simple message at the community meeting: "Friendship is really
the key."
Jeremiah's emotional response came six days after Teresa
Klein called the police and claimed the boy had grabbed her butt in a Brooklyn
corner store Wednesday.
Klein issued an apology after viewing surveillance video
of Jeremiah's backpack brushing her backside as he passed her in the store. The
video clearly shows Jeremiah's hands were in front of him as he passed her.
Klein also claimed that she called the police because the
child's mother was aggressive.
"I felt someone grab my a--. I said, 'Don't touch my
a--.' The woman flew at me, claimed she was a police officer, threatened to
arrest me and I called 911," Klein told New York ABC station WABC.
On Friday, Klein returned to the store, as residents and
local media stood by, to finally watch the surveillance video. Footage from
inside the store showed the boy's book bag grazing Klein's butt. His hands,
which didn't touch her, were in plain sight on the video. Klein later
apologized on video to the boy after seeing the footage.
"Young man, I don't know your name, but I'm
sorry," she said.
"She basically said, 'I'm calling the cops on you.'
She didn't say the mom or anybody else. She said I'm calling the cops on you
and that poor, little boy, man," Littlejohn told WABC.
"We're definitely going to make a movement out
here," Littlejohn said in his Facebook post Sunday. "We're going to
stop people -- I will say, people -- from dialing 911 unnecessarily. ... It's
gotta stop, people. ... We will not let this continue to happen."
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