Multiracial Couple Claims Harassment

Multiracial Couple Claims Harassment

OTSEGO, Minn.  --  First time homeowners come with big expectations."Laying our foundation, excited to get out of school and start a journey just me and her you know," Demetrius Baker Jr. said of buying a townhome in Otsego with his fiancée, Michelle Cardinal, just a few months ago.

Demetrius and Michelle welcomed it all, but after five months in their new home they say they were put on notice that they were unwelcome on Lachman Avenue. "As soon as the sun goes down that's when my heart sinks, I don't want to be here," Cardinal said Thursday night.
The couple said the trouble started in April.

"All the wires under the hood of my car had been cut, the brake line, the parking light, the AC it was a hack job," Michelle said of one of the early incidents.

That same month they say a neighbor came over, a white man, and tried to start a physical fight with Demetrius. Demetrius is black; Michelle is white.

"He called me the n-word, a nigger," Baker Jr. said.

Two weeks later the couple says they let their black lab out on his leash in the front yard for just a moment until they heard him crying."I went over there and saw a hole, really deep and I knew he had been stabbed," Baker Jr. said. The dog had been stabbed and had to be rushed to a 24-hour vetrenarian for care.

The couple at that point had filed three reports with police about the harassing neighbor.
After the stabbing they got a restraining order, installed security cameras and put in an alarm system.It didn't stop a burglary three weeks ago or what happened Thursday morning.
"Today when we woke up and I went to the garage, I was about to go to work, and all our tires were flat. Somebody just took a knife and stabbed them," Baker Jr. said.

Thursday was police report number seven since April. The couple says they believe the same neighbor is the prime suspect and his motive they say is simple."There is nothing I can do to change the situation or alter his feelings. He doesn't like me because I am black, it's black and white and that's what it is," Baker Jr. said.

The couple is working with deputies from the Wright County Sheriff's Department on these issues.A deputy with that department said he could not comment on this specific case.

Source: KARE and Jana Shortal