White teens with noose threaten black student

A black 14-year-old girl was threatened by a group of white teen boys armed with a hangman’s noose Monday afternoon at Fred T. Foard High School.

The incident is under investigation by the Catawba County Schools and the Catawba County Sherriff’s Office to determine the severity of the episode.

Was it a hate crime of racial intimidation or was it bullying?

Ray Parks said he was stunned when his daughter told him that a group of teen boys threatened his freshman daughter with a noose at her school.

“She said that they came up to her and they’d made this noose for her,” Parks said. “When she saw it, it caught her off guard. She tried to take it from them so she could tell her teachers. The boy said, ‘No – I’m taking this home so I can put it on my porch with a sign that says, Whites Only.’”

His daughter reported the incident to her school’s resource officer. Late in the day her English teacher told her that the boys had been punished by being put into in-school suspension. The teacher apologized that the incident had happened.

Parks said he has not been contacted by the school about the incident and only found out when his frightened daughter came home Monday afternoon and told her mother that she didn’t like her school anymore.

Catawba County Schools Superintendent Glenn Barger first heard about the incident when he was asked about it by local reporters.

“I don’t know much about it,” he said. “The incident happened late in the school day. One of the assistant principals was investigating the matter as the school day closed.”

Barger said he has many questions about the incident and the way it was handled.

“I feel that the school administration should have contacted the parents yesterday,” Barger said. “We’re going to find out why they did not.

Barger went to Fred T. Foard where he watched the footage of the incident and interviewed the victim and the teen boys. There are more witnesses to be interviewed, but Barger said he thinks the encounter was bullying, but was not a hate crime.

“That’s probably, in my opinion, where the investigation appears to be heading right now and I’ve based that on my interview with the victim,” he said.

Parks said he and his family moved to Hickory from Cincinnati to get away from crime and violence.

His daughter told him that the rope that had been tied into a noose was big enough to fit around her neck.

After seeing the footage, Barger described the noose this way: “It was white – a real thin rope about three feet long.”

Parks wants the boys who threatened his daughter expelled from school.

“Children should not be afraid to go to school,” he said. “Safety-wise we are really concerned about out daughter.”

The boys, all of whom are younger than 16 years old, attended school on Tuesday, but were separated from the other students pending the results of the investigation.

“The district has strict bullying policies in place,” Barger said adding that, depending on the results of the investigation and the disciplinary histories of the students involved, the punishment could rise to the level of expulsion, “Certainly it could.”

Barger said the school’s assistant principal has interviewed the students involved.

“The students who had the noose indicated that it was a joke,” Barger said. “She (the victim) said she did not feel threatened at that time.”

There is some diversity of ethnicities amid the students walking the halls at Fred T. Foard.

In the 2009-2010 school year – the most recent year for which data is available – 907 students were white. Fewer than one in 10 students were black with just 93 black students making up 8 percent of the student body. Asian students made up 7 percent of the population with Hispanic students at 3 percent, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.

Parks sent his daughter back to school the day following her encounter with the noose-wielding teens. He and her mother had given her some advice.

“Don’t say anything – don’t make the situation worse – stay positive like we raised you,” he said. “We know that racism exists, but we don’t teach our children racism.”

Parks said he thinks this is an isolated incident rooted in poor parenting, but says his experience in Hickory has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I’ve met some of the nicest people on earth in North Carolina, so for my daughter to experience this is a shock – it’s totally unexpected,” he said.