Imagine if you will, a loud outdoor party at your neighbor’s house.
In a fit of frustration, you grab your garden hose and spray it over your fence at the inconsiderate guests.
Sure, it’s an immature way to handle the situation. Some might even call you an ass for doing it. Indeed, the action would not only be condemned on its face for being disrespectful but also could land you facing deserved consequences, legal and otherwise.
Yet if the obviously un-neighborly action was committed by a white person and the partying neighbors and their dinner guests are black and Latino, in today’s society you’d be accused of committing a racist sin not unlike the white cops in Alabama who turned fire hoses on civil rights activists during the tumultuous 1960s.
That is exactly the situation in which stay-at-home dad, Marcus Rosebrock, a white German neighbor to Dr. Yves Duroseau, now finds himself, reportedly receiving death threats and living in fear for his family’s safety.
He is now being sued for treating the partiers as “animals” when he “violently” wielded his garden hose in a “heinous type of attack.”
In a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court, Dr. Duroseau’s swanky surprise birthday party for his sister, Rosevony Duroseau, “abruptly and forcefully ended” by an act that was “much like white law enforcement officers did to civil rights pioneers in 1960s Birmingham, Alabama.”
(Video: YouTube)
According to the New York Post, “The festivities were attended by 19 people, all family and friends of the Duroseaus including notable music executive Rigo Morales and former Fordham Law classmates of Rosevony, an asylum officer at the Department of Homeland Security. One white guest also attended.”
“The nine-course meal was catered by Vanessa Cantave — who won season 11 of the Bravo show ‘Rocco’s Dinner Party,'” the outlet added.
At 9:50 p.m., the filing alleges, a white woman went to the Duroseau house with her German Shepherd and demanded they turn down the music.
The noisy neighbors claimed they “were fearful that the dog would attack and seriously injure them,” but assured the woman that the party was winding down.
They then went back outside to the party.
Rosebrock reportedly responded by “water hosing” them with a hose that “was extremely powerful and stinging in nature,” according to the court papers.
When Dr. Duroseau asked from a backyard treehouse for Rosebrock to stop, “Defendant Rosebrock doubled down and continued water hosing,” according to the filing.
Rosebrock allegedly then turned the hose on the treehouse, making the men “afraid that they would be knocked to the ground from out of the tree house.”
The suit states that the attendees “were completely drenched” and “humiliated.”
“Yves and Claude Duroseau, both 52, and their guests all filed suit against Rosebrock and the woman with the German Sheperd on claims of battery, assault, trespassing and related alleged violations,” The Post reports. “They are suing for unspecified damages.”
Plaintiff lawyer Mina Malik claimed her clients “are traumatized to this day.”
The incident took place a “full year ago,” according to party-goer, Katya Dossous.
“Even though a full year has passed since this incident, I feel no less traumatized, humiliated, violated and ashamed,” she said.
“We experienced a very specific, very heinous type of attack that harkens back to a dark period of this country’s history,” Dossous said in a statement through her lawyers to The Post on Tuesday. “An attack I believe was premeditated, deliberate and thought out with the intent to make us feel ‘less than,’ like animals.”
As a result of the hose hysteria, Rosebrock told DailyMail.com that he has been “destroyed” by the allegations.
“I’m getting death threats over the phone. They [his kids] are already scared, we had to let them know what was going on because there are a lot of black families in the area, but it is not like that,” he said. “We had to inform the school too, I’m a class parent and I volunteer at the school but we had to tell them because rumors spread.”
“There is still much more to be discovered about what happened,” Rosebrock added, “but I can’t say any more because my attorney told me not to.”
“This has already destroyed us,” he stated. “They are trying to take away everything I own. My kids could end up on the street, I could end up losing this house. They believe we are loaded, but we are not. I have not worked for the last 10 years I have been at home taking care of the kids.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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