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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
‘Oh yeah, I'm throwing rocks at you.' A father fishing with his 10-year-old daughter target of alleged racist attack
'I'm a fixture there,' Brown said. 'Home away from home.' But on Memorial Day, Brown said he and his daughter were subjected to a racist attack at the Central Massachusetts lake, as a homeowner allegedly threw rocks at their boat while calling them a racial slur. Brown and his daughter are Black. 'Never in 1,000 years did I think that something like this could happen,' Brown said in an interview this week. 'I fish for therapy. It's peaceful to me. It's my Zen.' Brown recorded a video of the encounter and In the video, a shirtless man in a baseball cap can be seen yelling from shore. Advertisement 'Oh yeah, I'm throwing rocks at you [expletive],' the man said in the video, using a racial slur. After the video ended, Brown said the man grabbed a piece of driftwood and continued to be 'belligerent.' From his boat, Brown told the man he was going to call the police. Brown later met officers at a nearby boat ramp, and after viewing the video, they spoke to the man, identified in a police report as David McPartlan, 66, of Ayer. McPartlan told police that Brown 'was fishing too close to his dock/swimming area and [he] asked him to move,' the report stated. Advertisement 'I slipped a word out that maybe I shouldn't have but I was pissed,' McPartlan told police. Asked about the racial slur, he said, 'I'm not going to admit to it,' according to the report. McPartlan told police he threw rocks 'around' the boat but not directly at it. But the report stated that he 'threw rocks at the victims, to assault and intimidate, because of their race.' McPartlan is being charged with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault to intimidate. He is set to be arraigned in Fitchburg District Court on June 16. McPartlan did not respond to a request for comment. For Brown, 53, the day started as a typical fishing trip. Brown, who grew up in Worcester and later moved to Shirley, woke up early to avoid the holiday crowds and headed to New Hampshire to fish. He arrived home in Leominster around 1 p.m. and Azaylia told him she wanted her turn. Brown, an IT systems administrator at a pharmaceutical company in Connecticut, ordered a large pepperoni pizza, well done, with light sauce, just how he and his daughter like it. They picked it up from Athens Pizza and headed first to Whalom Pond in Lunenburg. But it was 'too busy,' Brown said, so they headed to Lake Shirley. Brown took Azaylia to 'the ideal place' on the lake in his 20-foot bass boat embellished with his brand name, SKB Fishing. Brown is a freshwater guide and takes children and adults out on the lake for a fee. Advertisement They stopped about 65 feet from shore and waited for three other boats fishing closer to the shore to clear out. He wanted Azaylia to catch bluegill, a fish that starts to nest in shallow areas between docks when the water reaches the upper 60s. They started a competition — who can catch more fish? Less than two minutes into their game, Brown saw a person coming down to the water. He assumed it was the owner of the nearby dock, to make chitchat or ask about what's biting. 'They're always friendly,' Brown said. 'If you ask me a question about fishing, I can talk to you all day.' As Brown started to tie Azaylia's line, the owner started to yell at them. 'It's his dock. It's his property,' Brown recalled. 'I should go somewhere else. And I feel he's trying to bully me to leave, right?' As Azaylia ate her pizza and put her feet in the water, Brown told the man, later identified as McPartlan, that he was out on the lake with his daughter for Memorial Day. Sheron K. Brown and his daughter eating pizza on Lake Shirley. Sheron K. Brown Brown said the closest his boat came to shore was about 50 feet, about two boat lengths away. But Brown said that McPartlan continued to curse at them. Azaylia looked at her father and asked, 'Did I do something wrong?' Brown recalled. 'No, honey, you didn't do anything wrong,' Brown told her. 'This man is just being mean.' Azaylia kept trying to catch a bluegill, and Brown took out his phone to capture the instant a flapping fin emerged from the water. For a moment, the excitement of fishing was all that mattered. Advertisement Then Brown saw a 'big splash' as a rock hit the water. 'I was scared for what else could happen,' Brown said. Brown yelled to McPartlan, 'Did you throw a rock at me?' He then began to record the exchange with McPartlan saying yes. Azaylia had never heard the slur before, Brown said. 'I'm feeling upset that he doesn't care that my daughter's there and he's used expletives,' Brown said. 'And I'm feeling upset that now I have to figure out how to explain somebody's racist remarks to my daughter.' Azaylia typically smiles and 'waves at everybody' on the water, Brown said. But on Memorial Day, she fell silent. 'This child is looking at me, you know, like, what do we do?' Brown said. The 354-acre lake, located in both Shirley and Lunenburg, is maintained by the Lake Shirley Improvement Corporation. Joanna Bilotta, the corporation's president, and Andrew Storm, its vice president, said in an interview Thursday that the corporation had no comment on the incident. But as a resident on the lake, Bilotta said she has seen Brown fishing before and 'found him very pleasant.' Storm said he was 'shocked and saddened' by the allegations. 'I've been on the lake my entire life, so over 40 years,' Storm said. 'I have never had a negative experience with any of the fishermen on the lake.' The lake is public and is governed by the state, Storm said. Brown said he plans to attend the arraignment. 'I've never encountered that before from anyone on the lake,' Brown said. 'It's been all peace, all love.' A week later, Azaylia is still processing the encounter, Brown said. Advertisement She says she feels OK, but she's been quiet, he said. 'Hopefully, she's not scarred by this,' he said. 'But I don't know.' Ava Berger can be reached at
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘Yeah, I'm throwing rocks at you': Racist incident targets father, daughter fishing at Mass. lake
With school out for Memorial Day, 10-year-old Azaylia Brown and her father, Sheron Brown, were spending an ideal near-summer day together. The pair grabbed a large pepperoni pizza from Athens Pizza, her favorite spot in their hometown of Leominster, then drove 10 minutes to Lake Shirley in Lunenburg to float, fish and eat the slices on the water in Sheron Brown's boat. But the afternoon abruptly devolved into what Sheron Brown said was his daughter's first experience of racism: a man throwing rocks at the family from shore as he screamed racial slurs at them, which Sheron Brown captured on video as he dialed 911. The man — identified from court filings as David McPartlan, 66, of Ayer — will be summoned on two charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and two charges of assault to intimidate, according to the Lunenburg Police Department. Attempts to contact McPartlan by MassLive were unsuccessful. Sheron Brown, 53, said he isn't sure how the apparent racially charged encounter will affect his young daughter emotionally in the weeks and years to come. 'I don't want my daughter to have a bad light of white males, or lake residents. I want her to treat people all the same,' Brown said. 'My daughter witnessed it, where someone calls her father that word ... I'm forced to explain things to her when I may not be ready. I'm forced to explain something to her, under duress, after I choke back how I feel, what I may want to do,' he said, his voice growing thick with emotion. 'I'm not prepared. How do you prepare for that situation?' Brown said. The incident on Lake Shirley in Lunenburg on Memorial Day happened just before 5 p.m., according to Lunenburg Police. Homes of a few hundred residents dot the 27 miles of heavily developed shoreline on the 354-acre lake, Brown said. There's a dedicated boat ramp and recreational beach area called Shady Point Beach and Campground. Brown is a competitive fisherman who also works in IT for a Connecticut biopharmaceutical company, and had been out on the water that day with his 10-year-old daughter in the custom fishing boat he's owned for 13 years. Brown said he's been a season pass-holder at Lake Shirley for half a decade, often coming to fish and spend time with his children. He said as a competitive fisherman who is a 6-foot, 4-inch, 270-pound Black man, he has become a 'well-known fixture' in the lake community, and has gifted fishing gear to local kids. He also grew up in the nearby town of Shirley. Brown said Lake Shirley residents are mostly white, while many visitors are people of color. However, Monday was the first time he had heard of or experienced any racial problems there. He added that residents have had issues before with fishermen leaving their hooks behind, but he makes a point to never leave his professional, expensive gear. The late afternoon of Memorial Day, Sheron and Azaylia Brown headed to a spot on the lake that Brown knew well, an area with plenty of fish and no plants or structures to tangle his daughter's line. When they arrived, three other fishermen who Brown said were all white men were already in the area, very close to the dock by a house on shore. Brown said he waited until those fishermen left, then moved his boat to a spot between 60 and 75 feet from shore. It was much farther out than where the others had been and away from the dock for Azaylia, he said. The two hadn't even cast a line before a man — later identified as McPartlan — came outside of a home and began to yell at the father and daughter. The man asked why Brown was fishing in that spot, and said 'that I shouldn't be fishing there,' Brown said. McPartlan said that 'I have somewhere else to go fish, and I shouldn't be here,' he recalled. Brown replied, 'I'm here with my daughter. It's Memorial Day. Why are you targeting me?' He explained they would stay far away from the man's property for the hour and a half they planned to be there, unlike the other fishermen who had just been there for bass under the dock. That's when McPartlan began to escalate the confrontation, Brown said, and started swearing at him. When Brown tried to ask the man to calm down in front of his daughter, McPartlan said he 'didn't want them there,' told them to 'go somewhere else,' and said, ''You guys think you own the lake,'' Brown recalled. Brown said McPartlan grew angrier, even as he tried to explain that the lake resident had ignored the other boats nearby. The man on shore continued to swear at him. Brown said he was going to start recording the conversation — and that's when McPartlan threw a large rock that splashed feet away from the boat, Brown said. In his video of the incident, Brown said, incredulously, 'Did you just throw a rock at me?' McPartlan yelled back, 'Yeah, I threw rocks at you, [racial slur].' He repeated the slur again, and Brown said he was calling the police. The video ended before McPartlan picked up a large stick, Brown said. As her father was verbally degraded for his skin color in front of her, 10-year-old Azaylia Brown sat quietly on the boat, listening. When the man on the shore grew quiet for a moment, the little girl looked at her father and asked what they had done wrong. Sheron Brown told her, 'We didn't do anything wrong. This guy is being mean.' But Brown, who has yet to explain segregation, diversity and racism to his 10-year-old and what she might encounter as a Black person in life, knows the incident is much deeper than that. 'Usually our first experience as a Black person — my first experience as a Black man — was when someone called me the N-word in school, out of the blue,' Brown said. 'That's usually your first experience with racism, when someone calls you an (expletive)‚" Brown said. 'But that's usually it, it doesn't escalate into anything else ... you deal with it, you understand it, and then you become an adult and try to avoid those situations,' he said. 'In this case, I don't know what kind of impact this is going to have on my daughter,' he continued. He said Azaylia talked about the experience with her friends at school, some of whom have already seen the video, and talked about the video with her older brother. 'They're aged 10. It just ... it upsets me, I'm not prepared. How do I prepare for that?' he said, crying. Monday's altercation on the lake finally ended after about 15 or 20 minutes, when Lunenburg police officers responding to Brown's call contacted Brown and said they had a hard time finding them on the water. Brown idled his boat away from McPartlan's area toward the boat ramp to meet the officers, and he said McPartlan waved at them in the background. In the days after the incident, Brown said he doesn't believe one person represents an entire community, nor that Lake Shirley has an outright racism issue. 'I don't hold lake residents, white people, white males, anyone that fits within that category, accountable for one person's actions. His actions are solo — he did this on his own,' he said. However, 'racism does exist,' Brown said. 'I don't encounter it to this degree. I never encountered it fishing-wise, but it's still here ... even in Massachusetts, it still exists,' he said. Brown also wants to raise awareness about sharing the water with fishermen and how often fishermen are harassed. He emphasized that fishing is 'a great way to develop a bond with your kids' in nature. He added, 'You should carry yourself around — the utmost, highest level — around kids, because you're trying to set a precedent for them.' 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