18 year old Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina High school student DeShawn Currie was just a normal teen going about his business. He just simply came home from school this Monday, and went up to his room when all of a sudden police came to his house.
Unknown to the teenager, a neighbor had seen him entering the house and had called the police . He and his foster parents, Stacy and Rickey Tyler and their three children are new to the neighborhood. When police responded they found the door ajar and entered the residence. Currie came down wearing a tank top and shorts and went to meet the police in the dining room.
The teen tried to explain to the officers that this was his home, not having full awareness of the situation the officers told him to shut up.
“I did everything that they asked,” Currie said “I was calm and being compliant with them until something happened.”
What happened was that one of the officers noted the three white children displayed in the family pictures on the wall. DeShawn Currie is black.
“Where’s your picture if you say you live here?” Stacy Tyler, Currie’s adoptive mother recounts one officer asking. That is when Currie became angry. The officers proceeded to pepper spray him at that point.
“I had moved into my room, and I’m feeling like I’m loved,” Currie said “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.”
Stacy Tyler came home after picking up her three other children to find Currie crying in an ambulance. “That was the part that broke my heart, knowing all the work that my husband and I have put into rebuilding his life and giving him a good and normal teenage life,” Tyler said “You don’t get in foster care and not have scars, and he’s been in foster care a very long time.”
The neighbor who called the police has apologized on Tuesday. No charges were filed against Currie.
“The Fuquay-Varina Police Department does not engage in nor does it condone racial profiling. At no time during this event was race a factor,” The Fuquay-Varina Police Department have said in a statement.
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