A 51-year-old white man is facing felony charges after being captured on video threatening a group of Black teens with a gun while calling them the n-word.
According to the Miami New Times, Mark Allen Bartlett is facing charges of carrying a concealed firearm in the incident, which took place on Monday, during an annual event against gun violence celebrated on Martin Luther King Jr. day.
Dream Defenders, a non-profit activist group, tweeted out video footage of the incident, saying that the teens were participating in the annual “Bikes Up, Guns Down” event when they were confronted by a woman who claimed that the teens had run over her foot with their bikes. The teens had reportedly joined the rally to protest a development project in Liberty Square, a public housing complex.
In one video, the woman argues with the teens, pleading with them to move their bikes because, “I have kids I need to pick up.”
In another video the woman gets in one Black teen’s face screaming, “You just ran over me!” before shoving him. However, from the angle of the video, it does not seem as if he actually struck her foot.
The teen repeatedly denies the claim even as the woman continues railing against the teens.
“You just touched me, you bunch of thugs,” she shouts as she starts to walk away as the group curses back at her.
BREAKING: Miami teens participating in annual #BikesUpGunsDown event assaulted and threatened with a gun in the Brickell Avenue area of Miami today. Captured by one of our members. pic.twitter.com/Hxtscb52PK
— Dream Defenders (@Dreamdefenders) January 22, 2019
Just then, the man, who was wearing a pink T-Shirt, approaches like some faux-caped crusader, with a firearm at his side, demanding “Who did it?”
“That guy in the red,” the woman said pointing at one of the boys.
“You ran over my foot!” she reiterates.
“You fucking losers. You fucking stupid n–gers. You’re all fucking dumb-ass fucking n–gers,” the man shouts at the teens before eventually walking away.
In another video, the man, who is in his car this time could be hear yelling out of his window, “N–gers suck!”
Another video emerged of Bartlett screaming “n*ggers suck” out of his car window before he got out of his car. pic.twitter.com/DkRCMmnn5O
— Dream Defenders (@Dreamdefenders) January 22, 2019
Dream Defenders slammed Bartlett’s charge as a “slap on the wrist,” a notion that was echoed by Miami City Commissioner Keon Hardemon in an Instagram post.
“I wonder what the narrative would have been had he shot one of those children. Assault with a deadly weapon and calling them n–gers sounds like a hate crime to me,” Hardemon wrote in his caption underneath several videos from the incident.
“Mark Bartlett was arrested but his charge doesn’t reflect his assault yet. Let’s see how our States Attorneys Office decides to file charges,” he added.
