A video of white driver jabbing a box cutter at an off-duty Black cop he allegedly called the N-word has sparked outrage in a New York community. The individual claimed to be a state trooper during the road rage incident in Newburgh.
“I’m an off-duty trooper you [censored] scummy [censored],” said the driver behind the wheel of red pickup truck, according to a censored version of the video published by WABC.
“That’s how troopers act?” yelled back the victim Robert McLymore, who is a pastor and police lieutenant out of the Town of Wallkill, New York.
Police said they made an arrest in this case, but they did not immediately identify a defendant. State troopers reportedly said this individual was never a trooper.
McLymore told WABC he was with his son in the city of Newburgh on Saturday afternoon when he slowed down to allow another vehicle to pass in front of him. This angered the driver behind him, he said. McLymore, who is Black, told the outlet the man yelled the N-word at him and his son.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” McLymore said. “I couldn’t believe the racial epithets, him saying that he was a cop or a trooper. Most of all him doing what he did and he’s an older gentleman.”
That older gentleman had followed them into a parking lot.
As seen on video, he attempted to stab McLymore with a box cutter, allegedly tearing a small hole in McLymore’s phone case. The lieutenant said he filed a report instead of personally exercising police action because he wanted to keep his son away from anymore trauma.
“Forty-five years I’ve been living here,” McLymore said. “Nobody’s ever done anything like this. Nobody has ever put a box cutter to my face or anything like that or disrespected me in anyway. So I was shocked. I replay it in my mind probably every three seconds.”
Newburgh mayor Torrance Harvey said the man in the video also targeted a Hispanic couple after McLymore.
[Screenshot via WABC]
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