BEAVERTON, Ore. (KOIN/CNN) – Oregon police arrested a man who shouted racial slurs at a young girl and threatened her. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt, largely because a couple of good Samaritans were on hand.
Around 4:30 Monday afternoon, police say a 17-year-old girl who’s African American was walking down the sidewalk when she got a strange feeling about a man nearby.
Witnesses say 37-year old Samuel Corbett started following the teen and threatening her.
Witness Ain Avila said, “All I heard was yelling and as I got closer he was screaming the N-word and yelling ‘you should die, you’re the scum of the earth.'”
And it says it looked like Corbett was going to hit the girl. “yeah he was cocking his arm back,” Avila explained.
Avila knew he needed to pull over and help. “Nobody should be targeted because of the color of their skin.”
Several good Samaritans confronted Corbett and the teen ran to ampm for help. The manager there said, “So I told the lady to come inside because it’s more secure because you don’t know if the wacko is going to come back or not.”
Inside the manager tried to comfort the teen as they called police. He said, “She was… I’ve never seen anyone shake that much, she’s just tiny, she’s really tiny you know and she had a backpack on and she said she was headed to school.”
Back outside, the good Samaritans stood watch at the door. Avila said, “And he was trying to still look for her but we told him back up man because we’re not going to let you do anything, so he started retreating away and police arrived and got him just in time before he got onto the bus.”
Beaverton’s police chief issued a statement thanking the community for standing up against racism.
Avila said it was just the right thing to do. “You’re going to make America great again by coming together all colors white, black, brown you name it coming together and making the country better.”
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