Bereaved woman reportedly subjected to threats of racial violence

Rosalind Hoover’s neighbors, Christopher and Tyler Littlefield, did not take kindly to her request that they stop revving their engines — a pickup truck with no muffler and a moped.

Hoover, who is black, said she was suffering a migraine when she heard the Littlefield brothers, who are white, revving their engines. In an affidavit to support a misdemeanor communicating threats charge, the 49-year-old Hoover wrote that at 7:45 p.m. on March 22 she asked them to keep the noise down and went back inside her house.

“Tyler parked in front of my walkway on his moped and [revved] the motor,” Hoover wrote. “I came back outside where Chris said to me to take my black ass back to Greensboro and that he would help his brother Tyler beat my ass and tear down my mailbox.”

The incident took place about seven weeks after the murder of Hoover’s fiancé, Donte Gilmore, which remains unsolved.

Hoover wrote in the affidavit that Chris Littlefield, who is 21, told her that “I was a black b****, and n***as is why the killings are going on, and that he (Chris) needed to kill our black asses and that is why someone killed my boyfriend.”

While Chris Littlefield was yelling at her, Hoover wrote in a separate affidavit that Tyler said “he bet I won’t get mail for a couple days because he was going to tear my mailbox down and whoop my butt and he will hang his rebel flag on my fence anytime he wanted to.”

Hoover lives in the Highland Mills neighborhood, a racially mixed and working-class area in southwest High Point that was built for employees of the Highland Cotton Mill. The mill was established in 1913 and continued to operate into the 1970s. Many of the original owners of the homes in the neighborhood have died or moved away, with much of the housing stock converting to rentals over the years.

Chris Littlefield could not be reached for this story, but Tyler denied the allegations to Triad City Beat.

“We work on our vehicles — I just recently got rid of mine,” he said. “She likes to raise hell and call the law on us when we go to rev ’em up.”

Hoover said she called 911 while the brothers were yelling at her. A High Point police officer responded to the call, but told her that he couldn’t take any action and she would have to go to the magistrate’s office to swear out a warrant.

Assistant Chief Larry Casterline said that would be standard practice for a misdemeanor in which the alleged offense did not occur in the officer’s presence.

“That’s pathetic and disgusting,” Casterline added in reference to the reported threat. “I guarantee that upset the officer.”

Hoover said she did as the officer suggested and went downtown to the magistrate’s office to swear out a warrant against the brothers, resulting in matching charges of misdemeanor communicating threats.

The criminal summons for each of the brothers that were signed by Magistrate MH Phillips alleges that they both threatened Hoover by saying, “I’m going to whoop your butt and hang my rebel flag on your fence,” even though Hoover’s affidavits report that only Tyler made the statement. The criminal summons for Chris does not reflect Hoover’s allegation that he used the N-word or expressed the imperative to kill black people.

Police Chief Kenneth Shultz noted that in cases where racial bias is evident the police have the discretion to pursue a separate hate crime charge, but emphasized the role of the magistrate in determining appropriate charges in Hoover’s complaint. He added that the district attorney could pursue additional charges if they see fit.

The brothers’ next appearance in Guilford County District Court is scheduled for Thursday.

Hoover said the brothers’ racial hostility persisted from the day she moved into the neighborhood in September 2016. At the time, she said, the brothers had a Confederate flag hanging in their yard, and threatened to drape it over her fence.

“I said, ‘The day you do that, that’s the day your grandmother’s going to have to take you out in a body bag,” Hoover recalled.

A month later, she said one of the brothers traced out the words “I hate n****ers” in the mud covering one of their vehicles. Later, she said, they spray-painted the word “F*** you, n***ers” under the hood of one of the vehicles.

Tyler Littlefield disputed Hoover’s account.

“Underneath the hood, it said ‘F*** your V-8,’” he said. “She didn’t like that. She didn’t like the fact that we that we had old vehicles. We don’t do anything wrong to her. We don’t cuss her ass out — excuse my French.”

Hoover’s allegations against the Littlefield brothers are consistent with a complaint against Chris by another neighbor, Elizabeth Winfree, resulting in a 2015 misdemeanor stalking charge. Winfree wrote that Chris Littlefield was “driving by all hours of the night acting crazy not actually threatening but yelling and cussing, waking my kids up, calling me names like ‘fat ugly-a** cow’ and telling me to ‘go f*** myself’ and just being loud and disturbing the peace, and now he’s got a blue light on his car and pulling people over saying, ‘Freeze, fuzzballs, you’re under arrest.’”

The misdemeanor stalking charge against Chris Littlefield was dismissed for reasons that are not explained in the casefile.

Hoover said since the Littlefields’ first appearance in court, the threats have subsided.

“They realized: ‘She’s serious,’” Hoover said. “They have backed off, and it wasn’t because of no help from the police.”

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