Florida teenager Jermaine Jones acknowledges that he was speeding when he drove through a gated neighborhood on his way to a friend's house Tuesday—but he says what unfolded afterward wouldn't have happened if he were white. The Black 16-year-old says two white men in the Sanford neighborhood yelled at him and his passenger and forced him to stop, WESH reports. The Seminole County Sheriff's Office says one man hurled a construction cone at the vehicle and the other threw a large stone through a back window of the car. In video recorded by Jones, one man accuses him of "racing" on the street. "Get out my neighborhood, f---wad," another man yells.
When the teen asked why one man appeared to have a gun, a woman told him, "You’re the one who would get a gun" and shouted, "You don't belong here," per the Washington Post. Jones called 911—and his parents, who rushed to the scene. The two men, 52-year-old Donald Corsi and 61-year-old Howard Hughes, were arrested hours later and charged with damaging property. Corsi, who allegedly threw the rock, also faces a charge of throwing a deadly "missile" into a vehicle and Hughes, who allegedly hit Jones's friend with the cone, has been charged with battery.
Sanford is where George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, but Jones' father says the incident immediately reminded him of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was chased and killed by three men as he jogged through a Georgia neighborhood. "We could have lost our son that day," CJ Jones tells the Post. Niko Jones, the teen's mother, tells WKMG that she would like to see more charges filed in the case. "There are kids, I was told, who speed through that neighborhood all the time, but they are not of his color," she says. "So I’m pretty sure that all of this happened because my son is Black." (More Florida stories.)
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