Deputies: Suspect follows Black man home after road rage incident, yells racial slurs

DELAND, Fla. - A Volusia County man says after a road rage incident, a man followed him home, called him racial slurs, and threatened to kill him and his wife.

Volusia County deputies say 55-year-old Michael Parkinson followed a man to his DeLand home after the alleged road rage incident Thursday night. The person told deputies he was yelling racial slurs and threatening to kill him and his family. 

His wife called 911 and said, "He’s outside slurring all types of derogatory terms. N— and all that stuff. And, he said he’s going to f— kill us. He knows where we live."

Deputies say Parkinson followed him home, lifted his shirt while he was standing on his porch to show a gun he was lawfully carrying. Parkinson told the dispatcher he would have killed the man had he had a gun on him.

"If I would have had my 9mm with me you would have been over there for a homicide because she showed me the gun, I would have identified to you guys it was a chrome gun and he would have been dead. I would have shot him," Parkinson told the dispatcher.

Another similar road rage incident is alleged to have happened in DeLand just two weeks ago. In this case, deputies say Nicholas Gordon chased a Black family to an intersection. The family told deputies that he yelled racial slurs at them and pulled out a gun.

"This racist, bigoted violence, where people are attacked because of the color of their skin, or sexual orientation, the full power of the sheriff’s office is coming after you if you think we're going to allow this to happen in Volusia County," Sheriff Mike Chitwood said following this incident. 

The NAACP West Volusia Branch says incidents like these happen more than you'd think.

"This is nothing new. We get calls weekly, sometimes daily about this behavior that’s carrying in all of Volusia County," said NAACP West Volusia County Branch President  Sean King. "People are feeling more bold. So they’re taking what they feel inside, using road rage as an excuse to do an act of malicious, bad behavior. "
 

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