Authorities have finally intervened after a racist woman has been reportedly tormenting a Black family for months. On Tuesday, police arrested Kathryn Smith after public outcry reached a zenith due to viral social media posts “showing Smith making hateful comments right outside the family’s home in suburban Salt Lake City,” Scripps News reports.
That same day, the Unified Police Department (UPD) of Greater Salt Lake issued a statement on how the department was “investigating the incidents in Midvale involving a person identified by various media outlets as making harassing and racist statements to neighbors.”
Tyler Ayres is the attorney representing the harassed family, and told ABC News, that they have requested to remain anonymous. Per Ayres, they purportedly have recorded evidence of more than 80 incidents that have involved Smith.
The mother described how “She walks by our home daily and screams racial profanities at our home.”
“[S]he spit on our vehicles, camps in front of our house in the middle of the night, messes with our vehicles, paces around in our front and backyard in the middle of the night, chases our son around the neighborhood with sticks and leaf blowers, threatens to have her cats eat our kids,” the mother noted.
In another egregious incident, the mother says Smith “assaulted my pregnant belly stating I shouldn’t bring more children into the world,” the mother added.
As ABC News reports, “Smith allegedly ‘forcibly poked’ the woman’s pregnant stomach ‘before pushing her with both hands in the stomach,’ the warrant states, adding this was “‘observed by several neighbors.'”
“Disturbing the peace, harassment, assault, battery, trespassing, all of these things — and we’re not even getting into the technical civil rights ones,” stated Ayres, clarifying how, “Those are just basic common law claims.”
“It’s amplifying a very serious situation and experience, living as a Black person in Utah, that I don’t think we discuss enough,” the lawyer notes.
The situation is even more distressing because this was supposed to be a cause for celebration—“[they] bought their first house and it’s pretty awesome, and then they have to put up with this. It’s very disheartening to them; it’s saddening to me.”
The operating chairperson for the Utah Chapter of Black Lives Matter Rae Duckworth echoes Ayre’s sentiments, saying “It’s super gut-wrenching and heart-throbbing to see what this family is going through…So I can’t imagine what they’re actually experiencing.”
“They’ve used every resource given, and there’s just been no accountability for this type of behavior that is just inhumane and disgusting,” continued Duckworth.
Ironically enough, Smith wasn’t even arrested for the allegedly hateful remarks or battery, but because of outstanding warrants, which “included disorderly conduct in August, and property damage and destruction after she allegedly ripped the family’s garden,” Fox13 writes.
After her arrest, 67-year-old Smith posted a $1,000 bond and was “released on her own recognizance.”
Smith has not yet entered a plea, but will be heading to court next year on January 11, 2024.