A woman who called police on a black man who was babysitting two white children told a 911 operator that she had a “funny feeling” about him, newly released audio shows.
The incident took place this week in Georgia, where 27-year-old Corey Lewis was babysitting two siblings and had taken them to a Walmart. A white woman saw the black man and thought it was suspicious to see him with the two young white children, so she called police. As NBC News reported, audio of her call to 911 has now been released and showed that the woman believed the man could have been abducting the children.
“Hi there, I’m in the Walmart parking lot at Barrett Parkway and I just got my nails done and I see this black gentleman with these two little white kids and so I just had a funny feeling,” the unidentified woman said in audio released by news station WSB-TV .
“Maybe he knows their mom, I don’t know, but I don’t know that he knows them,” she said.
The woman recounted how she confronted the man and asked if he knew the children, to which he answered “Why wouldn’t I?” But when she asked to speak to the girl, Lewis refused, and he eventually drove away with the children. The woman followed him to a gas station, and told the 911 operator that she would have felt guilty for not calling the police to express her suspicion about the black man.
“It could be nothing but I’m not sure and I figured, let me call up,” she said. “And again, if I didn’t do this, I’d be up all night.”
He captured video of the discussion with a responding police officer on Facebook Live, and claimed that he was being racially profiled. The officer allowed them to go after Lewis explained that he was their babysitter.
The incident is the latest in a string of people calling police on black people who have done nothing wrong. The same week, a Brooklyn woman called police claiming that a 9-year-old black boy had groped her in a neighborhood corner store, but surveillance footage from inside the store showed that the boy’s backpack had only grazed the back of the woman as he walked by. She later apologized to the children, but said she would not apologize to their mother, who grew angry after the accusation against her son.
Do you know what is amazing is that Corey Lewis actually has a company that mentors kids. #BabysittingWhileBlack pic.twitter.com/w42dgWYE7u
— Klondike ? (@KlondikeThemer) October 10, 2018
Corey Lewis, who is the owner of a youth mentoring program, was watching the siblings while their parents went out on a date.
