INCIDENT: (Photo credit: Flickr)
CALIFORNIA’S RIALTO Police Department were served on Monday (May 7) with a notification of pending legal action on behalf of Donisha Prendergast, Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan and Kelly Fyffee Marshall.
Last week, the three black women were leaving an Airbnb in Southern California when Rialto police stopped them because a neighbour thought they were stealing from the property.
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, one of the women who was detained took to Instagram and Facebook to share her ordeal. In the post, she said the women were leaving the Airbnb when seven police cars surrounded them.
"The officers came out of their cars demanding us to put our hands in the air. They informed us that there was also a helicopter tracking us," she wrote. "They locked down the neighbourhood and had us standing in the street."
In the post, she wrote that a neighbour across the street called the police because she saw black people putting luggage in a car and assumed that they were stealing.
According to Fyffe-Marshall’s statement, the ‘misunderstanding’ escalated almost instantly when a police sergeant arrived on the scene 20 minutes later, who insisted the women were lying and asked for proof, Fyffe-Marshall wrote.
“We showed them the booking confirmations and phoned the landlord...because they didn't know what she looked like on the other end to confirm it was her...they detained us,” she said.
Fyffe-Marshall also said police admitted that the neighbour called police because the women didn't wave to her as they were loading their luggage into the car.
“We have been dealing with different emotions and you want to laugh about this but it’s not funny. The trauma is real. I've been angry, frustrated and sad. This is insanity,” she wrote.
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