BY: Walker
Published 3 years ago
A white father and son accused of shooting a black FedEx driver as he delivered packages in Mississippi were inspired by the murder of black Georgia jogger Ahmaud Arbery, lawyers for the victim claimed.
via: Revolt
According to NBC News, 24-year-old D’Monterrio Gibson and his lawyer, Carlos Moore, want authorities to hit the accused men with harsher charges for their actions.
Gibson said that on Jan. 24 he was just doing his job, dropping off packages in the City of Brookhaven, when he encountered the two men.
It was 7 p.m. and he had just dropped off a package on Junior Trail, the outlet reported.
Suddenly, a man in a white pickup truck began to honk at him and follow his van. Gibson wonton yes driving until he noticed another man standing in the middle of the road pointing a gun at him, he said.
Gibson recalled that the man told him to “stop.” However, he decided to keep going, driving around the man who began to shoot at him as he drove off.
The pickup truck continued to follow him to an interstate, Gibson said. And when he called the police, the dispatcher said that they had received a call regarding a “suspicious person” in the neighborhood Gibson had just come from.
Upon returning to the station, Gibson and his manger noticed the bullet holes in his van and the packages. They found multiple bullets on the van’s floor, NBC reports. The next day, Gibson and his boss filed the police report.
The incident Gibson said has left him traumatized. He said that he believes the men pursued him because he is Black and because they thought he didn’t belong in their neighborhood.
Moore said that both suspects, Brandon Case, and his father, Gregory Case, turned themselves in on Feb. 1. But they posted bail the next day on bonds worth $75,000 and $150,000, NBC reports.
While Gregory Case was arrested on investigation of conspiracy and Brandon Case was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault, Moore and his client want both men to face federal hate crime charges on top of stricter penalties.
Moore told TIME that he has had conversations about the late January incident with officials inside the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division. He said he was told by Brookhaven Police that the FBI collected materials related to the case on Thursday (Feb. 11).
“The federal government is taking this seriously and we do believe that they are looking into it for [possible] hate crime,” Moore told TIME.
These men are still on the loose,” Moore said. “They chased him to the interstate last time, what’s stopping them from chasing him now. What’s stopping them from going after him at this point?”
“No one was ever brought to justice,” Moore added.
Many have likened this case to the deadly encounter between Ahmaud Arbery and the three convicted white men who chased him through a south Georgia neighborhood in February 2020.
