PONTE VERDO, Fla. – A soccer official for a youth league has been dubbed "Golfcart Gail" after calling police on a black man who was attending his son’s soccer game.
The incident was caught on video on Sunday in Ponte Verdo, Florida, when a white field marshal called police on a man who says he was yelling instructions at his son.
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Ginger Williams, the woman who recorded the incident, said, “This man was simply trying to watch his son's soccer game and cheer for him from the sides. He yelled, ‘The ref is right!’ when he saw his kid out there getting frustrated after a call.”
The man, who has not been identified, explained to police that the field marshal thought he was yelling at the referee.
“Ma’am I was talking to my son, nobody else,” the man can be heard telling the police in a video captured by Williams.
SOCCER WHILE BLACK. A parent at my son’s soccer game had the police called on him for cheering for his son during the...
Posted by Ginger Galore Williams on Sunday, October 14, 2018
He told deputies the field marshal called 911 even after he offered to leave the game to avoid any trouble, ABC reported.
“He just got nasty with me. [He said] ‘I’m not talking to you anymore,’ and ‘We’re done with this,’” the field marshal explains to police in the video.
“As he began to pack up his things Golfcart Gail informed him that she was calling the police because she no longer felt safe with his threatening behavior. This man was peacefully leaving his own son's soccer game to avoid exactly this situation," Williams wrote as part of a Facebook post regarding the altercation.
“What makes this even worse, is that a parent had actually been ejected from this game during the third period. There had to be a delay of game due to the disturbance yet, Golfcart Gail didn’t need to call the police on him,” Williams continued.
Deputies responding to the scene can be heard telling Williams, "Anybody can call the police at any time for any reason. We'll respond."
Another woman, Maria Morales-Walther, also recorded the incident and told ABC, "He was standing next to me, talking to his son and this lady decides to butt in somehow and is now calling the cops because he was talking to his son.”
When the field marshal saw Morales-Walther filming the encounter, the field marshal said, "Ma'am, you can leave, too. Videotape yourself as you're walking out," Morales-Walther told ABC.
This incident comes on the heels of a similar story in St. Louis last week where a woman was fired from her property management job after a viral video showed her trying to bar a black man from entering his apartment building. Read more on that incident here.
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