Scene appears to depict reenactment of George Floyd arrest
A disturbing photo showing a supposed BLM supporter putting his knee on the neck of a small child, mimicking the arrest of George Floyd, has triggered outrage online and apparently prompted a police investigation in Ohio.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office reportedly launched an investigation into the alarming image, which was captioned “Blm now mf.”
According to local news channel WHO TV7, law enforcement and medics visited two addresses connected with the case on Tuesday, but no arrests were made.
In the photo, a tattooed man wearing only shorts is shown putting his right knee on top of the neck of a toddler lying face down on the floor.
The child, who is wearing a diaper, appears distressed and crying. Another adult, cropped out of the picture, holds the child’s arms behind their back.
Clark County Sheriff’s Office investigating social media photo showing man kneeling on child’s neck: https://t.co/1u5s8eI69C
— WHIO-TV (@whiotv) July 21, 2020
Some sources indicate that the photo had been taken as a morbid joke and shows a two-year-old girl with the boyfriend of her mother. The child reportedly was not physically hurt in the incident and is now with her father, who lives separately.
The image of apparent child abuse sparked understandable outrage online, with people calling for help in identifying and arresting the man and his accomplice. Some commentators on the right rallied to call it a representation of the entire Black Lives Matter movement. However, there was no immediate proof that the perpetrator had any connection to the cause.
George Floyd, an African American man from Minneapolis, was killed in May after being arrested by police. An officer pinned him to the ground, kneeling on his neck, and ignored his pleas to allow him to breathe. The on-camera death prompted nationwide outrage and mass protests against police brutality and racism.
Amid the protests, some people recreated the infamous scene and posted their works online, seemingly fishing for angry reactions and cheap notoriety. Social media quickly cracked down on the fad. Three British teens responsible for one such reenactment were arrested by Northumbria police on suspicion of committing a hate crime.
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