Two teenage boys recently opened fire on police officers, but their parents are blaming the Black Lives Matter movement for their sons’ actions.
Marquell Rentas, 17, and and his cousin Trenton Nace, 18, were arrested Friday after police in Columbia, Pennsylvania, were fired on for 45 minutes. The police were responding to an emergency call from someone saying that they had heard gunshots.
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No police were shot or injured in the attack, and police were eventually able to gain access to the house.
At the time, Marquell told police, “I’m the one who did it, I’m the one who shot. My cousin didn’t do it.”
Now, both teens are in custody, while their parents are saying that they were simply following what they had learned from Black Lives Matter.
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“They are in jail for doing what Black Lives Matter wanted them to do: shoot at cops,” said Marquell’s mother Luz Rentas and Trenton’s father Roberto Rentas in a joint statement.
“The truth is that these are two punk kids following the orders of an irresponsible organization and now they’re gonna pay for it.”
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Kevin Ressler, a pastor and co-organizer of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Lancaster, responded to the complaint by saying, “It’s very important that people understand Black Lives Matter groups across the country, and particularly here locally, have been very vocal about it, do not support violence. No Black Lives Matter organization, or group across the entire country, has supported violence as a means to an end, or shooting, or attacking, or targeting police officers at all.”