Black Teen Living With White Foster Parents Assaulted and Pepper Sprayed By Police After Neighbors Thought He Was a Burglar

Wake County, NC — 18-year-old DeShawn Currie from Wake County, North Carolina teen was recently assaulted and arrested by police in his own home. Currie, who is Black but lives with his white foster parents, was apparently mistaken for a burglar. Neighbors reportedly called the police when they saw Currie entering his home after school one day. But, he was not breaking in; He simply opened an unlocked side door and walked in.

According to Currie, when police arrived, they didn’t even ask questions. “They was like, ‘Put your hands on the door,’ I was like, ‘For what? This is my house.” Then he asked them, “‘Why are y’all in here?'” Then he says the officers pointed to photos of white people hanging on the wall, and told him that he was lying.

He later told reporters, “I’m feeling comfortable, I had moved into my room [in the house with his new adoptive parents], and I’m feeling like I’m loved. And then when they come in and they just profile me and say that I’m not who I am. And that I do not stay here because there was white kids on the wall, that really made me mad.”

He also added that police were shouting profanity at him and pointing their guns at his face. When he insisted that he was in fact in his own home, police then attacked him with pepper spray.

The police, however, defended their actions, saying that that Currie did not obey the officer’s orders.

Stacy Tyler, Currie’s foster mom, commented, “He’s my baby boy just as much as my other three children are.” She added, “My 5-year-old looked at me last night and said, ‘Mama I don’t understand why they hated our brother, and they had to come in and hurt him.'”

Ricky Tyler, Currie’s foster dad, commented, “Everything that we’ve worked so hard for in the past years was stripped away yesterday in just a matter of moments.”

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