Last month a biracial boy was playing with a group of teens in Claremont, New Hampshire when the boy, who is half black, ended up hanging from a tree with a rope around his neck.
He was taken to the hospital and his mother took photos of his swollen neck. She then shared the shocking images on Facebook and the story quickly went viral.
The victim’s family says that he was lynched deliberately and that one 13-year-old boy, in particular, was the ringleader. That boy is white.
The family of the injured boy says that he was left hanging from the tree as they ran away and the police, at least at first, seemed as though they wanted to brush it off.
Now the family of the alleged perpetrator is speaking out about what happened that day in their point of view.
— Twitter reacts to Trump calling Kaepernick a ‘son of a b*tch’ during Alabama speech —
Rhianna Larkin, 33, the mother of the 13-year-old says that it was all an accident, not a crime motivated by racism. She now fears for her safety as well as her children’s safety as they have been receiving threats.
Larkin claims the younger boy was not pushed off anything with a rope around his neck but that he put the rope around his own neck. That is when her son thought it would be funny to scare him so that he jumped and that is what they claim happened.
They also say that the 8-year-old was wearing a hoodie and her son did not know he still had a rope around his neck.
“[Her son] said ‘I ran to him and tried to stop him from spinning.’ He said, ‘I grabbed around his legs and at that time, the rope had come loose and I noticed he opened his eyes,’ and then he was able to talk and stand. And [my son] said he couldn’t apologize enough.”