Update: Friday, 1:40 p.m. The Augusta County Sheriff’s Office is now reporting that a family member has informed investigators that the alleged perpetrator was a man with black hair and black facial hair, and that the race of the man was not specified.
Original report: Friday, 11:57 p.m. Stop if you’ve heard this one before: details are scarce, but an unidentified black man tried to do something unlawful.
This was the thrust of a press release from the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office that was sent out on Thursday, and which I decided wasn’t worth reporting on.
Three other local news organizations decided otherwise, and provided the clickbait and the bare details, since that’s all any of us had.
The gist of it: the sheriff’s office reported that it learned this week that there was supposedly an attempted abduction of a child on the 700 block of Hildebrand Church Road near Waynesboro on Aug. 3.
Six weeks ago.
The alleged perpetrator: an unknown black man.
Described as wearing blue jeans, a blue shirt, and having facial hair.
As I said, not a lot of detail, if any of that can be counted as detail.
The car was also occupied by a female, no further description given.
The report from the sheriff’s office said the child didn’t disclose details of the incident until this past weekend.
So …
Nothing seemed up to anybody at the time, or for the past six weeks, but now, let’s sound the alarms.
We don’t know what happened, honestly, no offense, if anything happened, given that there’s so little there to be practically nothing, but, hey, let’s go ahead and send out the presser about a black man driving around on back roads trying to abduct white kids.
There’s something to be said about the media outlets that passed this on to their readers and viewers without context.
My thinking there: shame on y’all, all of y’all, seriously.
You really should know better, than to push the race fearmonger button.
The sheriff’s office, to me, seems to be trying to deflect something here.
It’s been a rough few weeks for the leadership there, but this is no way to get back in the good graces.
Column by Chris Graham
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