Race

we need answers about the 8-year-old boy hung from a tree by white teens

September 11, 2017
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With little help from local police, a Claremont, N.H. family is trying to determine what led an 8-year-old black child to be the recipient of blistering rope burns around his neck. The boy’s grandmother, Lorrie Slattery, pieced together a consistent account of what happened through her grandson’s 11-year-old sister and the other children who were present, recounting that her grandkids and several white teens were playing in a neighbor’s front yard around 5 p.m. on Aug. 28 when the teenagers began calling the boy racial epithets. Epithets grew to rock and stick throwing before the teens grabbed a nearby rope from a tire swing. “The (teenagers) said, ‘Look at this,’ supposedly putting the rope around their necks,” Slattery said. “One boy said to (her grandson), ‘Let’s do this,’ and then pushed him off the picnic table and hung him,” Slattery said.

It is unclear whether or not the 8-year-old agreed to wear the rope or if he was forced to. After allegedly swinging back and forth by the neck several times and struggle to remove the noose, the boy sustained cuts to his neck which led him to be airlifted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

As late as last Friday, Claremont Police Chief Mark Chase was unable to comment on the ongoing investigation, saying that kids under investigation should be “protected”. “Mistakes they make as a young child should not have to follow them for the rest of their life,” Chase said.

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