Illinois Attorney General files hate crime lawsuit against white mother and son accused of harassing Black neighbor

CHICAGO (CBS) — A mom and son in western Illinois are the initial to be sued by the point out for a despise crime below a 2018 enlargement of the state’s despise criminal offense regulations.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s business office filed the lawsuit versus Chad and Cheryl Hampton, who are the two white. They’re accused of harassing their Black neighbor, Gregory Johnson, in Savanna, Illinois, for quite a few months.

“Our complaint alleges the defendants intentionally utilised the shameful heritage of lynching and racism in The usa to terrorize and instill panic in their future-door neighbor merely because he is Black. No one particular ought to be subjected to this type of dislike,” Raoul reported in a assertion.

The match promises the Hamptons exhibited the racial slur n***** in front of a Confederate flag in a window facing the victim’s dwelling, displayed swastikas in immediate watch of the victim’s dwelling, and even utilized a noose to dangle an effigy of a Black person manufactured to resemble the sufferer from a tree in entrance of his property.

“I seemed out of my new household at a Black-confronted mannequin shackled and lynched on a tree department, the N-term scrawled upon a window, and swastikas,” Johnson stated in a statement delivered by Raoul’s office environment. “Our American flag was changed with their Accomplice flag. Have we not arrive any farther than this? This lawsuit is about tearing off the shackles that even now restrain us to this day. It’s about hardly ever giving up on the mission of our United States Constitution. We, as a country, are much better than this.”

The lawsuit, filed in Carroll County, seeks far more than $25,000 in damages in opposition to the two Chad and Cheryl Hampton.

Separately, Carroll County prosecutors have charged Chad Hampton with criminal destruction of property, and Cheryl Hampton with prison harassment of a witness.