msmith198025
November 16th, 2009, 11:04 AM
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091116/D9C0JHM00.html
Nearly three years after Heather Ellis switched checkout lines at a southeast Missouri store and touched off what she calls a racially charged dispute with white customers and authorities, the young black schoolteacher faces a trial that could send her to prison for 15 years.
Witnesses have told authorities that Ellis cut in front of waiting customers at the Walmart in Kennett on Jan. 6, 2007, shoved merchandise already placed on a conveyor belt out of the way, and became belligerent when confronted, according to court filings.
Ellis maintains she was merely joining her cousin, whose checkout line was moving more quickly. She claimed in a written complaint to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that she was then pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by Kennett police officers.
Police say in court documents that Ellis refused requests to calm down and leave the property, allegedly kicking one's shin and splitting another's lip while resisting arrest. Her trial on charges of assaulting police officers, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace begins Wednesday in Dunklin County Circuit Court. Syracuse, N.Y.-based Your Black World Coalition is organizing a Monday rally in Kennett.
A college student in New Orleans at the time of her arrest, the 24-year-old Ellis now teaches in Louisiana, where she is engaged to a state trooper. She has said she feels trapped by "small-town politics" in Kennett, where her family lives.
"What a shame the system can destroy a young person's future like this because of bad cops," Ellis wrote to the NAACP in April.
Sorry honey, you do not sound like a victim in this.
Nearly three years after Heather Ellis switched checkout lines at a southeast Missouri store and touched off what she calls a racially charged dispute with white customers and authorities, the young black schoolteacher faces a trial that could send her to prison for 15 years.
Witnesses have told authorities that Ellis cut in front of waiting customers at the Walmart in Kennett on Jan. 6, 2007, shoved merchandise already placed on a conveyor belt out of the way, and became belligerent when confronted, according to court filings.
Ellis maintains she was merely joining her cousin, whose checkout line was moving more quickly. She claimed in a written complaint to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that she was then pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by Kennett police officers.
Police say in court documents that Ellis refused requests to calm down and leave the property, allegedly kicking one's shin and splitting another's lip while resisting arrest. Her trial on charges of assaulting police officers, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace begins Wednesday in Dunklin County Circuit Court. Syracuse, N.Y.-based Your Black World Coalition is organizing a Monday rally in Kennett.
A college student in New Orleans at the time of her arrest, the 24-year-old Ellis now teaches in Louisiana, where she is engaged to a state trooper. She has said she feels trapped by "small-town politics" in Kennett, where her family lives.
"What a shame the system can destroy a young person's future like this because of bad cops," Ellis wrote to the NAACP in April.
Sorry honey, you do not sound like a victim in this.