A Georgia woman apparently thinks it’s okay to shoot an unarmed African-American teen because she considers him a “bad black.”
Elisabeth Cannon of Macon shot 15-year-old Vernon Marcus Jr. in the head on Monday (Jan. 16), as he walked by her house. The teen is in critical but stable condition, reports the New York Daily News. Hours before the shooting took place, Cannon called the Bibb County Sheriff ‘s Office because “kids were throwing rocks at her house.” But it’s unclear if Marcus participated in the matter.
“I’m not an evil person or a bad person,” Cannon told WMAZ-TV. On Tuesday (Jan. 17), she was freed and posted a $12,400 bond. According to her, Marcus and his friends were stoning her house for months, and that things had gotten worse after she called officials last week.
“They’d get the biggest rocks,” she said. “When they would see us in the yard, they would glare at us and say, ‘I know you’re the ones who called police on us.’ I saw them out of the corner of my eye,” she added. “The barrage of big rocks started, not just at my car and house, but [at] me. I started shooting in their direction. They started running.”
Prior to the incident, a Bibb County sheriff went to her house and told the young men they were not allowed on the premises. And while Cannon admits that maybe she didn’t make the best decision, she remains adamant in racially profiling African-Americans.
“I have some really good black neighbors, but the good blacks won’t get onto the bad blacks,” she told the Macon Telegraph. “You try not to profile but at the same time 99.9 percent of the crime is going to be, most often, a black male.”
“You can tell if they’re just out walking for exercise or going to the store or whether they’re up to something,” she added.