Ohio mom jogging with kids at night terrified slow driver meant her harm, race not a factor she said

A white Ohio mother’s life is in turmoil after she falsely accused a black man of following her and not living in her affluent neighborhood.

The woman, Michelle Bishop, was jogging with her two children at night when a vehicle slowly approached (It was later learned the driver was checking out his neighbors’ Christmas lights).

Feeling threatened, Bishop ran to the nearest home, rang the doorbell, and complained that she was being followed. The car then pulled up to that very driveway, and the driver, a black real estate developer named DaMichael Jenkins, exited. Why? It turns out Jenkins lived there.

As Jenkins walked up to his porch, Bishop asked him whether he lived there. He said yes.

“I don’t believe that,” she then replied without specifying why on Earth she didn’t believe it.

She repeated this two more times before suddenly running off with her children while screaming for “help.”

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Now in fairness, Bishop and her husband did return shortly thereafter to collect a stroller she’d abandoned and to also speak to Jenkins and his wife.

“You scared the crap out of me,” Bishop told them. “Well, you just have to understand my point of view – being by myself, I have two kids.”

When asked why she hadn’t initially believed Jenkins, she said, “It was the way that you were talking — I was really caught off-guard.”

“I really hope that you’re not upset with me,” she added.

Initially after the incident occurred in November, Bishop issued a statement on Facebook slamming her critics for accusing her of being racist.

“I will not apologize for making any sort of racist remark. I’m the furthest thing from a racist,” she said. “I will however apologize that my expression could ever come across in such a way that somebody could think that about myself and my family.”

But after significant backlash, particularly from the black community, Bishop bent the knee and tearfully apologized, though she claimed in her apology that, thanks to it having been night when the incident occurred, she’d originally thought Jenkins was a white man.

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Jenkins, a former federal prison inmate, meanwhile published an Instagram post praising himself for having maintained his cool during the whole incident.

“Life will always throw you curveballs, but it’s not about the obstacles—it’s about how we handle them,” he wrote in the post. “During my transition, one of my main motives was to make my family and my wife proud. I promised myself—and them—that I would keep my word, even coming home from the feds.”

“Looking back at the video, I’m proud of myself—not just for the success I’ve achieved, but for the growth I’ve experienced. I’m proud that even in the hardest moments, I was able to handle the situation with grace and not spaz out, when it could have been so easy to lose control. That’s the growth I’ve worked for, and it shows me how far I’ve come,” he added.

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A post shared by Mike Jenkins (@3dvisionz_)

Despite Bishop’s insistence that this whole incident had nothing to do with race, many critics, particularly black ones, don’t believe her.

“This is really disturbing,” one critic tweeted. “It shows just how far we have NOT come when talking about racial equality. The video doesn’t lie. They man was pulling into his own home, without any threatening words, body language, or gestures. She assumed he was out of place because he is black.”

“Historically, so many black men have lost their lives due to false accusations like this,” another critic tweeted.

Vivek Saxena

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