The slurs shouted through traffic were almost too hurtful for Neco Eley to believe.
The hatred – hurled in racial epithets and threats this month from a white man in a silver Mercedes-Benz behind her – was so frightening, Eley said, that now she struggles to fall asleep.
“This man,” she wondered, “really hates Black people that much?”
The bald, white man with dark sunglasses captured on Eley’s nearly six-minute video on U.S. 90 has not been arrested. Biloxi Police confirmed Tuesday that a judge declined to issue an arrest warrant on a simple assault charge Eley filed last week. The reasons for that decision are unclear, police said, and Eley vowed to press forward with that charge and said she hopes to file more charges soon.
The case marked a grim reminder of a time when hateful words were common across the South.
And Biloxi leaders said any glimpse of that hatred today must be punished.
The language “goes against our country,” said Biloxi Council member Felix Gines, who said the man should go to jail. “He doesn’t need the privilege of driving on our roads,” Gines said.
Slurs and threats captured on video in Biloxi
The road rage that Eley caught on video began when she pulled onto U.S. 90 in Biloxi. She was headed for the doctor’s office with her 6-year-old grandson in the car.
Eley, a 54-year-old lifelong Biloxi resident, said she noticed a car driving erratically behind her. The car veered onto the sidewalk to pass a white Corvette, then swerved back into traffic, she said.
Traffic was slow and down to one lane, so Eley held her cell phone out the window and recorded with one hand and held the steering wheel with the other. She started recording because said she feared the man would cause a crash. The man yelled at the Corvette driver then pulled behind her, Eley said. She feared he saw her recording. Traffic stopped and started, and the man stuck his head out of his window and began to curse.
Eley kept filming. He taunted her with racial stereotypes, her video shows.
He called her a racial slur at least five times.
“I should take you out that car and beat you with a tire iron,” he yelled in Eley’s video.
He told her to go “back to Africa,” the video shows.
Had a child not been in the car, he said, cursing, he would “snatch” her phone and “smash” it to pieces.
Eley held her phone camera out of the window and tried to focus on the road. The man was just angry, she recalled thinking. She could not hear what he was yelling, she said, because of busy traffic on the other side of the highway.
She started laughing to calm her grandson, who was nervous, she said.
Road rage ends in tears
After five minutes of cursing, the man gave her a final middle finger and pulled away, she said. When she got to the doctor’s office, she sat in the parking lot and began to panic, she said. Her grandson was crying.
“It’s going to be fine,” she remembered telling him. “It’s going to be fine.”
Eley drove to her daughter’s house and watched the video.
In the quiet indoors, she said she first heard the words filled with hate. She started to cry.
“This man threatened me,” she said, “When I first watched it, it just broke me down.”
More than a week later, the hate and fear stays with her. She is taking sleeping pills, she said, even though they leave her groggy in the morning. She is afraid he will find her again. She said she has mostly stayed at home.
“My mind,” she said, “is heavy.”
Victim vows to press more charges
Biloxi Police Captain Grandver Everett said a judge declined to issue an arrest warrant on the simple assault charge but has not told police on the reasoning for that decision.
Everett said police believe a law was broken and will work with Eley on any additional charges she files. He said the facts of Eley’s case point to a charge of disturbing the peace, a misdemeanor which includes a $500 fine or up to six months in county jail. Simple assault, the charge Eley filed, carries the same penalties. But that charge requires a present threat, Everett said, and it is possible Eley could have driven away if the man acted on his words.
Eley said she could not have fled because she was stuck in one lane of slow traffic. She said she would not drop the simple assault charge and will add any additional charges she can.
Biloxi has rallied around her, she said. Gines went with her to file the charge at the police station. When she posted the video on Facebook, hundreds of people extended support. One woman offered a free car wash, Eley said, to scrub the racism away.
Eley and Gines said they would like to see the man held accountable. In addition to a jail sentence, Eley said, the man deserves to lose his job.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything like that in Biloxi,” Gines said. “And we want to keep it that way.”
“My justice,” Eley said, “is to see him pay for what he said to me.”
Source Agencies
