Latest news with #SheronBrown
CBS News
2 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Man accused of hurling rocks, racial slurs at father and daughter fishing on Massachusetts lake
A father-daughter day on a lake in Lunenburg, Massachusetts ended with a 911 call they say because of a stranger who hurled rocks and racial slurs at them. Police said that stranger, David McPartlan, is now facing charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and assault to intimidate. With the catch of the day in hand, it should have been the perfect daddy-daughter day for Sheron Brown and his 10-year-old girl on Lake Shirley. Incident captured on video But their Memorial Day was marred by a man seen on video admitting he called them racial slurs and hurled rocks at them. "I was really angry," said Brown. "I'm sad that I had to deal with this with my daughter. I'm sad that I have to explain these things to her." "I didn't expect in our Zen, in our passion, in our field of play, in our home from home, that she would be confronted with a racist situation," added Brown. Sheron Brown said a man hurled rocks and racial slurs at him and his daughter while they were fishing in Lunenburg, Mass. CBS Boston Lunenburg police say McPartlan said the father and daughter were fishing too close to his dock and asked them to leave. However, Brown, a competitive fisherman since 1998 who's fished on the lake for years, wanted to be in the no wake zone because it was the safest place for his daughter to fish on a busy holiday weekend. "He just starts telling me, I can't fish here I shouldn't be here and I should go somewhere else and I'm like, but you didn't say anything to anybody else, I said there were three boats that were actually fishing close to your dock," said Brown. Words escalated to the frightening confrontation. "His mannerism was more aggressive, I don't know what he's going to do, he already threw the rock, so I'm recording him, and I said I'm going to call the police," said Brown. Investigators said, "Because of David's racial remarks combined with the assault on Sheron, and his minor child, his intent was to intimidate them due to their race." "Stand up to bullies" As painful as that experience was, Brown knows there's a lesson in there for all of us. "If anything, I'm showing my daughter you stand up to bullies, if someone harasses you and racism has no place in the world," said Brown. McPartlan has been summoned to Fitchburg District Court. He's expected to be arraigned June 16.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Massachusetts father and 10-year-old daughter viciously assaulted during scenic fishing trip
A man and his daughter were targeted with racial slurs and had rocks thrown at them during an unprovoked attack while enjoying a fishing trip on a Massachusetts lake. To celebrate Memorial Day Weekend, Sheron Brown, a Black father, took his 10-year-old daughter, Azaylia, to Shady Point Beach in Lunenburg for a joyful father-daughter fishing trip, as reported by Mass Live News. But the outing quickly turned dark when a white man on the shore made it clear he wanted them gone, hurling racial slurs and launching rocks near their boat. The man, identified as 66-year-old David McPartlan, was later arrested and charged with four counts of assault. 'Never in 1,000 years would you expect to be out doing what you love with the person you love, my daughter, and someone aggressive and yelling out things that are just awful and atrocious,' Brown told NBC Boston. Last weekend, Sheron and Azaylia grabbed a large pepperoni pizza from Athens Pizza - her favorite - and made the 10-mile drive to the nature-filled campground for a fun, near-summer day out on the water. 'My daughter simply wanted to eat pizza and catch a fish with her dad on Memorial Day,' Sheron wrote in a post shared to Facebook. Planning to float, fish and enjoy their meal, the pair headed to Lake Shirley to launch their boat after finding Whalom Pond too crowded for their outing. Together, they chose to fish in a different part of the lake than usual, thoughtfully staying clear of other boaters enjoying the holiday weekend. However, their peaceful afternoon was shattered when Azaylia faced racism for the first time - a man on shore hurled rocks at their family while shouting racial slurs, an incident Sheron captured on video. In the footage, a shirtless white man, identified as McPartlan, is seen standing on his property with his dogs, facing the water where the father-daughter duo were fishing. 'His first words were, 'Don't fish here next to my dock, go somewhere else. Why are you here?'' Sheron told NBC. The situation quickly escalated as McPartlan grew increasingly aggressive, shouting and swearing at Sheron and 10-year-old Azaylia with rising intensity. When Sheron tried to ask him to calm down in front of his child, McPartlan responded: 'You guys think you own the lake', the father recalled in an interview with Mass Live. Seconds later, McPartlan hurled a large rock that splashed into the water just feet away from their boat. In disbelief, Sheron asked: 'Did you just throw a rock at me?' Then, in a shocking moment captured on video, McPartlan is heard saying, 'Oh yeah, I'm throwing rocks at you, *****,' using a racial slur directed at Black individuals. 'It seemed like he was trying to establish some kind of invisible boundary where I can't fish towards his dock, even though that was not my intention anyway,' Sheron told NBC. 'There was at least 65 feet between us, which is a considerable distance,' he added. As McPartlan fell silent for a moment, 10-year-old Azaylia - who was sitting quietly on the boat, listening - asked her father what they had done wrong, according to Mass Live. 'We didn't do anything wrong,' Sheron responded, as reported by the outlet. 'This guy is being mean.' When McPartlan began repeating the slurs, Sheron then told him he had no choice but to call 911 - especially after what his young daughter had just been forced to witness. 'I told him, "Hey, I'm gonna record this if you're not gonna stop," the father told NBC. According to Sheron, the video ended just moments before McPartlan picked up a large stick. The altercation finally came to an end after nearly 20 minutes, when Lunenburg police, responding to Sheron's call, informed him they were struggling to locate him on the open water, Mass Live reported. When police arrived to McPartland's property, he told them, 'I slipped a word out that maybe I shouldn't have but I was pissed,' according to a police report obtained by NBC. When police asked what the word was, he responded: 'I'm not going to admit it'. He also allegedly admitted to throwing rocks around the boat. Sheron, a competitive fisherman who has spent countless hours on his custom fishing boat over the past 13 years, said this is the first time he had ever encountered anything like this on the water - despite the fact that most Lake Shirley residents are white, Mass Live reported. Now, he wonders how this experience will emotionally impact his daughter in the 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,' Sheron told Mass Live. However, 'racism does exist,' he emphasized. '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 added. 'I'm not prepared. How do you prepare for that situation?' McPartlan, of Ayer, was charged with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault to intimidate. He is due in Fitchburg District Court on June 16, as reported by NBC News. It was not immediately clear whether he had retained an attorney to respond to the charges. McPartlan did not immediately respond to for comment. 'Ignorance is not bliss. I firmly believe it's a choice,' Sheron wrote to Facebook.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- 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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