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Police Handcuff White Girl Traveling With Black Male Dance Instructors

Landry Thompson rehearses with her two instructors. CREDIT: Screenshot from KHOU
Landry Thompson rehearses with her two instructors. CREDIT: Screenshot from KHOU

A 13-year-old white girl traveling with her dance instructors in Houston, Tex., was handcuffed and taken by police to Child Protective Services, over the pleas of the black male guardians she was traveling with.

Landry Thompson traveled with her instructors from Oklahoma to attend a dancing and training session, according to KHOU 11 News. They stopped at a gas station on their way home in the evening, and, exhausted, began to doze in the car. Police showed up and surrounded them, asking who the girl was. Emmanuel Hurd, one of the instructors, told the officers he had a notarized letter from Thompson’s parents establishing his guardianship during the trip.

But police put both Thompson and Hurd in handcuffs, and put a terrified Thompson in the back of the police car. They called Thompson’s mother Destiny only after they brought her to Child Protective Services.

Destiny told KHOU 11 she was “horrified.” “She was with the people I wanted her to be with. She was with people I trusted,” Destiny said. “And now she was taken away from those people and in a shelter with people I didn’t know.”

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Destiny said she was initially told she would have to fly to Houston to retrieve her daughter, although police eventually released Landry to her instructors 11 hours later. Police have declined to comment, meaning they have provided no explanation about what prompted them to stop the trio in the first place, let alone why they proceeded to remove Landry without even calling her mother to verify the notarized letter.