Local News

Kirkwood Postal Worker Says Viral Racist Rant Came Out of Nowhere | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

Published

2 years ago

September 6, 2023

[ad_1]

click to enlarge This South County woman verbally berated Dawntanya Smith last month after Smith couldn’t help her retrieve her mail.

The day Dawntanya Smith became an internet sensation started as a normal day.

Then came the Kirkwood Karen.

Smith supervises a post office in Kirkwood. One day in August, a middle-aged female customer approached her window and asked if Smith could help her obtain her mail from a PO box at another post office. The woman asked Smith to call the other post office and have them give her the key — something Smith couldn’t do.

At first, Smith says the customer was nice and cordial. She didn’t raise a fuss when Smith declined her request, but she did say something negative about herself, Smith recalls, which signaled to Smith that something wasn’t all quite right.

A postal worker for 10 years, Smith says she always tries to be nice to people. “I like people, and people can have bad days.” So she walked the woman out of the post office and told her everything would be OK, that “the sun is going to shine.”

“The only thing I’m registering is, ‘Let me help her, let me get her outside,’” Smith says. “Just, ‘Have a great day. It’s going to be OK.’ You know, positive things.”

They left on good terms, Smith says. Then, about five minutes later, the customer returned in a completely different mood.

“It was a totally different situation,” Smith says.

What happened next would be seen by far more people than the handful at the Kirkwood Post Office that day. The woman returned to the post office in a fit of rage — and Smith ended up capturing her tirade in a video that’s since been viewed on social media more than a million times.

The video shows the customer screaming at Smith, a Black woman, saying, “You’re not equal!” She later whipped out her phone to record her own video, and said, “I send it to Trump. Maybe he could do something. And then Obama could sue him.”

The woman walked from her car to the post office’s entrance multiple times during her minutes-long outburst. Once, to viewers’ confusion, she asked Smith where she got her hair done, saying she hadn’t had hers done in five years.

Toward the end of the video, the customer finally left the lot, only to return again. “I tell ya, I’ve had it,” she yells. “Goddamn, you have ruined my life. I sit here. All I want is my mail. My mail!”

The internet immediately pounced on the video, and the woman’s nonsensical arguing made her an easy target. From an outsider’s view, her outburst fit her into the stereotype of a “Karen,” a middle-class white woman who rages against those she perceives as beneath her.

But the customer’s problems run deeper than the “Karen” moniker would suggest. Days after the incident at the post office, court records show, the woman was charged with assault and unlawful use of a weapon for a different incident in which she threatened someone with a knife.

Court records also show a litany of financial troubles. Landlords who have rented to the St. Louis County woman, and sued her for rent, detail a pattern of bizarre behavior and hostility. One landlord, who asked us not to use his name, fearing retaliation, says he lost nearly $7,000 when the woman refused to pay rent and beat holes into her apartment’s walls and floors the day before her eviction. Another landlord says the woman called the police more than 40 times during the year she rented from him.

Ruth Broome, who briefly rented to the woman in 2017, says the woman once called the police on her for supposedly trying to steal her reading glasses.

“She can appear perfectly normal, but then she can start crying to please not send her to Afghanistan,” Broome says. “She’ll go to Iraq, but not Afghanistan. Just rambling about things that make no sense at all.

“She told me my son was an asshole. I don’t have any sons.”

RFT has attempted to reach the woman several times over the past week but has never heard back.

Whether the woman suffers from mental health problems or not, Smith says, some things are “rooted in people” and it takes the right moment for those feelings to bubble out.

“It’s almost as if this woman had been waiting to say this,” Smith says. “And once she started, everything she had been thinking just came out.”

Smith initially reacted to the interaction with humor. She showed the video she recorded to her coworkers laughing, saying, “Look at this lady” and “she was bugging out today.” It took time and people asking her if she was OK for the reality of what she experienced to set in.

“Oftentimes, as Black women, we have to push things aside just to keep going,” Smith says.

She has dealt with a lot of rough customers in her 10 years at the post office. She’s even been called the n-word while carrying mail in Kirkwood. But her interaction with Snow was far more extreme than any other racist altercation she’s experienced.

Yet Smith is barely heard during the video. She only breaks her silence a few times to say “that’s not nice” or “please step off of our lot.” It was her instinct to stay calm, Smith says. But she’s glad she recorded the tirade.

“I’m working in an area where, if I didn’t record it, I would have been the villain and she would have been the victim,” Smith says.

Strangers started calling the post office apologizing for the woman’s behavior and sending Smith flowers after the incident went viral. She’s since “blocked out” most of it and is still processing much of what happened.

Even so, she feels like her brush with online fame has taught her something important.

“I think I’m going to be OK,” Smith says. “Nothing enlightens me more to know that I can go high when somebody goes low.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Local News

Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

[ad_1]

A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

[ad_2]

Source link

Local News

Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

[ad_1]

Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Local News

St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

Published

1 year ago

May 21, 2024

Natural Bridge

[ad_1]

The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

[ad_2]

Source link