White man pulls gun on four FAMU students at apartment building near campus
A white man pulled a gun on four FAMU students on Saturday in an incident depicted in a now-viral social media video.
A white man pulled a gun on four FAMU students on Saturday in an incident depicted in a now-viral social media video, BuzzFeed News is reporting.
The FAMU juniors were entering the Stadium Centre complex, where a friend lives, when the man pulled out a firearm, BuzzFeed reports. The man claimed he was a resident.
One of the four students, Isaiah Butterfield, filmed the incident with his phone and posted it to Twitter, generating at least thousands retweets.
The students were not injured.
In the video, a white man wearing a baseball cap is seen approaching the students and identifying himself as a building resident. He is seen pulling a gun on them in an apparent effort to block them from boarding an elevator. Complex residents are mostly off-campus students in Tallahassee, where FAMU is located.
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Barred Entry
Butterfield offered details of the incident to BuzzFeed News, explaining the incident exploded as he and friends Stephen Brooks, Joshua Cosby and Fitzroy Rhoden waited at the building’s garage entrance. Their mutual friend, Zavian Flowers, had just moved to Stadium Centre and was hosting a party, Butterfield told the news organization.
While they waited for Flowers to let them into the building, the man entered the building through the door.
“Then he turned and he said, ‘You aren’t getting in here if you don’t have a key,’ “ Butterfield told BuzzFeed News.
The student continued, “We were shook because we hadn’t said anything to him. We were just standing there and then he closed the door and locked it.”
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A short while later, the man returned and began harassing the students again. A white man Butterfield identified as “Chad” approached the scene and intervened on the students’ behalf, asking the man what was his problem.
Chad and the man in the baseball cap exchanged words and the man returned into the building, leading one of the FAMU students to catch the door before it closed and prompting the group of students to enter the building and follow the man to the elevator.
The white man in the baseball cap then continues his tirade in the video.
“You aren’t getting into this elevator without a key to this building,” the man is heard saying.
As the students attempted to walk past him, he produced a gun.
As they exchanged words with the man and asked if he really lived in the building, Flowers showed up and took his friends up to his apartment. It is not known what happened to the man in the baseball cap.
These are the kind of people that are burning Nike products , we are sick of the discrimination ? never thought I’d have a personal experience with racism like this, this man pulled a gun on us because we were walking up to my friends apartment w/o a key pic.twitter.com/TlMFQjoM1N
— zay❕ (@_IsaiahNoThomas) September 8, 2018
Authorities Respond
Stadium Centre management issued a statement to residents indicating that the man seen in the video does not live there. Butterfield provided the statement to BuzzFeed News.
“Firearms are prohibited on our property and we take this matter very seriously,” the statement read. “Moreover, we are firmly committed to creating a diverse residential community that is inclusive and welcoming to all.”
Tallahassee police told BuzzFeed News they are investigating and a spokesperson for FAMU told the news organization that they are investigating too.
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