A white South Carolina couple who reportedly “harassed, assaulted, and threatened their neighbors,” including burning a cross next to their Black neighbors’ home, may be forced to move.
Worden Butler, 28, and Alexis Hartnett, 27, prove that racism doesn’t just disappear with older generations, as their Black neighbors report an ongoing harassment campaign from the Millennial couple.
Army veterans Monica and Shawn Williams had purchased a home in Horry County in South Carolina to serve as their retirement home. While they were celebrating Thanksgiving in the home with family, they recorded a cross being burned near their fence.
Cross burnings were tools for intimidation by the racist anti-Black terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, throughout the 1900s. The KKK would intentionally choose to burn crosses in areas that would attract attention.
Hartnett’s and Butler’s harassment didn’t end there.
As The Independent reports:
According to a police report, [Ms. Hartnett] allegedly directed a racist slur at the Williams’ while being interviewed by police.
Mr. Butler also allegedly shared a picture of the victims’ mailbox showing their address on Facebook, and wrote he was “summoning the devil’s army and I don’t care if they and I both go down in the same boat,” according to the Horry County Police Department.
After these ‘continuous breaches of the peace,’ a special prosecutor is requesting that a judge “grant a temporary injunction against Worden Butler and Alexis Hartnett, which would declare their house a nuisance, close it down, and force them to leave for one year.”
As Ms. Williams told WCNC, a local NBC affiliate “we saved, we worked really hard. It has been traumatic and we’re still trying to process all of that.”
The Horry County judge has not yet scheduled a hearing date for the temporary injunction.
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