A North Carolina high school student was pepper-sprayed earlier this week in his own home after responding officers mistook him for a burglar.
The teen, identified as 18-year-old DeShawn Currie, came home from school Monday a little early and entered an unlocked side door, which his foster mother had left open for him.
Neighbors, not recognizing him, called police, who arrived on scene to find the house’s side door still slightly open.
Officers drew their weapons and advanced into the home, with Currie coming from his room upstairs to meet them. The officers, upon asking for the teen to identify himself, questioned Currie’s assertions that he did indeed live at the residence.
Stacy Tyler, 29, said that the officers told her son that, “Where’s your picture if you say you live here?”
Currie was adopted as a foster child by Ricky and Stacy Tyler in December 2013.
The couple, who is white, have three other children. Currie, when talking to ABC11 about the incident, said that he believes the officers pepper-sprayed him because he was black, telling the station:
I’m feeling comfortable. I had moved into my room, and I’m feeling like I’m loved. And then when they come in and they just profile me and say that I’m not who I am. And that I do not stay here because there was white kids on the wall, that really made me mad.
The police department, however, claimed in an official statement that Currie was “very volatile, profane and threatened physical violence toward the police officer.” The department also said that it “does not engage in nor does it condone racial profiling. At no time during this event was race a factor.”
Currie claims that he “did everything they asked” and was being “calm and compliant with them until something happened.”
The family recently moved to Fuquay-Varina, a suburb of Raleigh, in July. The neighborhood has recently experienced a rash of break-ins and thefts.
Stacy Tyler said she came home on Monday to find Currie handcuffed to an ambulance, saying that “was the part that broke my heart, knowing all the work that my husband and I have put into rebuilding his life and giving him a good and normal teenage life.”
“You don’t get in foster care and not have scars, and he’s been in foster care a very long time.” Of Currie, Tyler said, “He’s my baby boy just as much as my other three children are.”
No charges were filed against Currie for the incident. Police Chief Larry Smith and police spokespeople did not respond to emails from the Associated Press requesting a list of instructions that Currie failed to follow.