On Monday, September 27th, the case against a Mitchell County man accused of running over a Black Lives Matter protestor in Johnson City, Tennessee, was dismissed. A Washington County, TN grand jury came back with No True Bill, meaning not enough evidence to charge in the case of Jared Benjamin Lafer , age 27 of Bakersville and the charges will be removed. Lafer was charged with assault after a cellphone video surfaced of the incident outside a Johnson City restaurant in September 2020. In the video, a vehicle is driving through Black Lives Matter protesters in a crosswalk. The alleged victim, Johnathon Bowers, had both of his legs broken in the incident. At the time, Lafer’s attorney said after the hearing he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with his wife and three kids in the car just after dinner. “This is not a case about racism,” attorney Mac Meade said. “He did what he felt was necessary to get out of a situation that he felt was dangerous to his family.” Robin Ellis, president of the NAACP for Yancey and Mitchell Counties, called for the incident to be treated as a hate crime, saying in a letter that it was not an accident and asking the Johnson City NAACP to take action. Ellis cited screenshots of Lafer’s social media posts where he joked about running over protesters and calls Black Lives Matter a Marxist organization. In May, Lafer’s charges were reduced from a C Felony to a D Felony and the case was bound over to the grand jury. Lafer told News Channel 11 in Johnson City, “I just want to thank God and everybody else who supported me,” he said. “I knew from day one that I was not guilty, and it took the grand jury, 12 people to prove that as well.”
Photo courtesy of WCYB.
