Mother charged with assault for slapping black teen after screaming n-word
Heather Lynn Sebra watched as her son jumped on top of John Thomas and started pummeling him with punches.
But when she jumped in and slapped Thomas in the face, police say she crossed the line and committed assault.
A short video clip shows Sebra’s son charging and taking Thomas down to the ground. He proceeds to slam Thomas several times all while punching the teen in the head.
Sebra pulls her son off the boy, only to hit him herself with a hard slap to the face.
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“You are not gonna call my son a n—-r, do you understand me?” she yells in the recording.
Both Sebra and her son are white, and Thomas is black.
Thomas never fought back during the altercation and seemed confused by the woman’s accusations.
“What? Why would I call him a n—-r?” he asked after the slap.
Thomas’ mother, Nicole Thomas, got emotional watching the video of her son being assaulted.
“How dare you,” Thomas told WTVR. “For this woman to restrain my son as she did by his shirt, and stick her finger in his face, after slapping him and chastising him for saying something he did not, how dare you?”
“To abuse, berate, belittle, intimidate and physically attack someone is disgusting.”
John Thomas said he didn’t fight back because he knew he was the one in the right.
“Plus, she was an adult,” he told reporters. “So I let her do it. Let her make that choice because in the end I’m going to win.”
Dr. Travis Burns, the principal of Northumberland High School, stated he is “deeply concerned” over the altercation, which was between a ninth-grader and an 11th grader, both of them being on the varsity football teams.
Apparently Sebra’s son was embarrassed after being told to mind his own business for trying to get in on Thomas’ conversation. He left but then came back with his mother and a football volunteer before the fight began.
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Sebra has been charged with assault and has been served with a protective order.
The school took disciplinary action against the two students in the fight as well as against the student who took the video.
