A Black FedEx driver in Mississippi says he was making deliveries late last month when he was chased by a pair of white men, one of whom fired multiple bullets into his vehicle as he tried to escape them.
D’Monterrio Gibson, 24, said he believes the men pursued him because he is Black and because they thought he didn't belong in their neighborhood. Now he's asking the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to take the case from local police and for the men to face federal hate crime charges.
Gibson, who lives in Utica, about 50 miles from Brookhaven, where the encounter occurred, said the incident has left him traumatized. Gibson said he swerved to get around the man, who started shooting toward the rear of the Hertz vehicle. He said he called his manager, who told him to return to the FedEx station. The pickup truck chased him all the way to an interstate, he said.
He told the dispatcher he was not a “suspicious person” and that he was just doing his job and had been shot at, he said. The dispatcher told him that had not been relayed by the person who reported seeing a suspicious person in the neighborhood.When Gibson got back to the FedEx station, he said, one of his superiors inspected the van and found multiple bullet holes in the rear of the vehicle and on packages.
The Lincoln County Jail would not confirm that the men had been released or what charges they faced. The Brookhaven Police Department and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation did not reply to phone and email requests for comment. “Had the roles been reversed and Mr. Gibson had been accused of shooting at them, he would’ve been arrested that same night, charged with attempted murder and put in jail and not allowed to bond out so easily,” Moore said.
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