Iowa woman arrested after confronting neighbor over BLM signs

A couple had to call the police as a last resort when a woman confronted them over their support of BLM

An Iowa woman has been arrested after she refused to leave the property of a couple who had several “Black Lives Matter” signs in their yard.

According to television station KCCI, Sunday evening Renee Corell-Newman was arrested and charged with public intoxication and criminal trespass after having a nearly hour-long argument with Shawnice and Michael Cameron.

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Shawnice, who is white, and Michael, who is Black, said that on the evening of the incident Corell-Newman knocked on the door to confront them about the signs. In addition to displaying the signs in the yard, Mrs. Cameron also sells them and splits the proceeds with the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP and Des Moines Black Lives Matter.

“She was just so upset, and we really went…we tried to educate her,” she said of the run-in with their irate trespasser.

The couple’s daughter, who was also present, recorded portions of the exchange on her phone and the video shows both sides explaining their views during the heated debate.

“I said, ‘I’m a White woman. You’re a White woman,’” Shawnice Cameron said. “I said, ‘When your husband leaves to go to the store, do you have a fear that he’s not going to come home?’ and she said, ‘No.’”

Despite attempts to deescalate the situation, ultimately the family realized they were getting nowhere and had to call the police to get the 57-year-old off their porch.

Corell-Newman was released from the Polk County Jail on Monday morning.

Though Corell-Newman told the Camerons that other neighbors objected to the signs, when they asked, no one else was willing to say they were bothered by them.

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“Right now, when you see people getting murdered for jogging, for sleeping, for doing something that could have been a citation and they died — that is inconceivable in 2020,” Shawnice Cameron told KCCI News.


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