Black girl, 11, assaulted by white neighbor, accused of stealing mail

Skhylur Davis was joined by her attorney, Justin Bamberg, to discuss the incident during a Zoom press conference on Wednesday.

Mariel Turner

May 20, 2020

Skhylur Davis is pictured in an undated photo. (Photo: Bamberg Legal)

An 11-year-old South Carolina girl is speaking out after she was assaulted by a white neighbor who accused of her stealing her mail.

Skhylur Davis was joined by her attorney, Justin Bamberg, during a Zoom press conference on Wednesday, May 20. According to an Aiken Department of Public Safety report, Skhylur was walking back from picking up her grandmother’s mail in Aiken, South Carolina, and standing near neighbor Elizabeth Shirey’s mailbox when the woman approached her.

Shirey aggressively accused the young girl of stealing her mail and grabbed her by the arms. After checking the name and address of the mail, Shirey let Skhylur go and apologized, according to the report.

″We shouldn’t have to sit here and have this discussion in 2020, in South Carolina on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery down in Brunswick, Georgia, a situation which the world is very much familiar,” Bamberg said. “Right here in Aiken, South Carolina we have another victim and this time, the charge is assault and battery. The victim unfortunately is an 11-year-old girl.”

Add ‘picking up mail while black’ to things we can’t do without the threat of violence. Meet my client Skhylur, an 11-year-old from South Carolina. This time the charge is Assault & Battery. Look for her story tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/iIVvUdZe59

— Justin Bamberg, Esq. (@JustinBamberg) May 18, 2020

He continued, “Mrs. Shirey happens to see this young child by her mailbox and proceeds to come out of her home, yell at this 11-year-old girl. Mrs. Shirey runs aggressively towards this 11-year-old child accusing her of committing a felony, stealing her mail. After realizing that Shkylur had not done anything wrong, this woman proceeds to offer her cookies, as though that makes things better.”

Shirey’s husband, Justin, is also accused of being rude to the girl and telling her that if Davis was a different “type” the situation would have gone differently.

“You don’t have to think about what type he meant,” Skhylur said during the press conference. “I wasn’t scared because in this type of situation, you need to do anything but be scared. It shouldn’t be like this and it’s wrong.”

The little girl’s grandmother, Alice Patterson, who has lived in the Whitemarsh Drive neighborhood of Aiken for a year, was shocked and hurt by the incident. She told reporters that she typically sends her granddaughter to get her mail.

“She was violated,” Patterson said during the news conference. “Growing up in the South, we had to endure this, our parents had to endure this. It’s 2020, we will not have our children go through what we had to go through.”

Shirey has been charged with assault and battery in the third degree. Her husband has not yet commented on the accusations against him.

Have you subscribed to theGrio’s new podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!