Off-Duty Cop Among White Mob In North Carolina That Forced Into Black Woman’s Home…

A group of white peo­ple armed with weapons demand­ed entry into the home of a black woman and her son in Pender County, North Carolina, late last Sunday night and refused to leave. Reportedly lead­ing the group was a mem­ber of the New Hanover Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Jordan Kita, who was armed and in uni­form dur­ing the inci­dent in ques­tion despite being off-duty and employed in a dif­fer­ent coun­ty. The mob claimed they were on the look­out for some­one named Josiah in con­nec­tion with the dis­ap­pear­ance of a young girl, accord­ing to an attor­ney now rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­ly. They wouldn’t take no for an answer when Monica Shepard and her son Dameon, a high school senior, told them repeat­ed­ly that no one by that name lived at that resident.

From WECT:

When Dameon attempt­ed to shut the door after telling the group who he was, Lea says the New Hanover County deputy stuck his foot in the door and demand­ed to come inside. Shepard woke up dur­ing this com­mo­tion and also tried to get the group to leave her prop­er­ty, indi­cat­ing the per­son they were look­ing for did not live there. Once again, accord­ing to Lea, the group con­tin­ued to ques­tion the Shepards, demand­ing to come inside. The deputy also blocked Shepard from clos­ing her door. Lea says at some point the group real­ized they were at the wrong res­i­dence and start­ed dis­band­ing, but by that time the Pender County Sheriff’s Office was called to the disturbance.

From CBS17:

Two deputies arrived to talk with the Shepards. Lea notes the group of peo­ple, includ­ing those who were armed, returned, and fol­lowed the deputies to the Shepards’ prop­er­ty. According to Lea, the deputies took no names of those in the group and didn’t inves­ti­gate the sit­u­a­tion. A cap­tain who arrived on the scene also did not take any action. Lea says the same cap­tain returned to the Shepards’ prop­er­ty the next day on his own, indi­cat­ed it would be com­pli­cat­ed to arrest any­one, but said he’d “look into it.”

Kita was final­ly charged with forcible tres­pass, break­ing and enter­ing, and will­ful fail­ure to dis­charge duties on Friday — almost a week to the break-in, and only after the family’s lawyer wrote to the District Attorney’s Office and asked them to inves­ti­gate the ter­ror­iz­ing inci­dent. He has also been fired, accord­ing to WECT. A sec­ond per­son, Robert Austin Wood, will be charged with going armed to the ter­ror of the pub­lic, District Attorney Ben David said.
Meanwhile, the Pender County Sheriff’s depart­ment is pat­ting itself on the back for doing absolute­ly noth­ing on the night in question.

From WECT: 

Sheriff Cutler admit­ted at the news con­fer­ence Friday they may have had enough evi­dence to make an arrest on the night of the inci­dent, but said he was proud his deputies dif­fused the sit­u­a­tion that night and they want­ed to make an informed deci­sion on this situation.

The oth­er mem­bers of the group remain at large.
Another rea­son why every black house­hold must have legal guns.