A white North Carolina woman is the subject of a criminal investigation after stealing a “Black Lives Matter” sign out of another person’s front yard. The theft was caught on the victim’s Ring camera located near the property’s front door.

Woman removing sign from a yard (WSOC-TV Screengrab)

According to WSOC-TV, an unidentified woman trespassed on Melanie Larkey’s property with the sole aim of removing the sign from her yard on Friday, March 11, around 1:30 pm.

The ginger-haired woman got out of a black sedan and marched up the grass to the sign. Before pulling up the sign, she waved at the camera. Then she retreated back to the car.

The homeowner was in her house during the crime but did not know anything was happening at the time. It was not until she reviewed her camera’s footage that she became aware of the violation.

“Surprised and unsettled are going to be the two words I’m going to use,” Larkey said when asked to describe how she felt.

She continued, “It was really unnerving. Her abrasiveness and walking into my yard and stealing something that didn’t belong to her.” 

“Then she even waved at the camera,” Larkey recalled. “And then made some distasteful remarks when she got back to the car she was in.”

The community of Starmount in south Charlotte, North Carolina, boasts approximately 2,800 people throughout its two ZIP codes (28210 and 28217). A predominately Hispanic and white neighborhood, less than 7 percent of the people that live in the area identify as African American, City-Data.com reports.

Larkey believes the sign and conversations about race should not seem provocative. In fact, because of the lack of diversity within the area, it could serve as an educational tool.

“I can’t figure out what it is about my sign that says, ‘Black Lives Matter’ is so upsetting to other people,” she remarked. “It has shown me, and a lot of the neighbors have mentioned it too, that we need a discussion about race.”

“Race and racial discussions in this country shouldn’t be provocative. They should be out in the open. People should be able to have a discussion about it,” Larkey concluded.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said they are still investigating the case.

However, over the last two years, activists, supporters, and allies with BLM signs outside of their homes have increasingly been the targets of harassment, intimidation, or hate crimes.

In July 2021, a 32-year-old white Minnesota man harassed a Black family because he was allegedly upset they put a sign in their yard and spoke out against racism in their children’s school. 

The family reported the man’s harassment to authorities and received a restraining order, after suspecting he might harm them. That did not stop him from stealing his roommate’s SUV and ramming it into a Black family’s home. Inside the truck, the man left a teddy bear hanging with a noose around his neck. 

For this, he was charged with 11 criminal counts including two counts of second-degree assault, two counts of stalking, and one count of first-degree property damage.

On Saturday July 24, the vehicle smashed into the Cold Spring home of Phillipe and Andrea Robinson, about an hour northwest of the Twin Cities. Inside the SUV, a teddy bear was hanging from a noose and the vehicle hit the home hard enough to do significant damage to the outside of the house. Photo: Andrea-Phil Robinson/ Facebook

A month later, a man thought to be a Chicago city worker yanked and turned over a Black Lives Matter sign a Black family placed in their yard. Like both of the aforementioned incidents, the homeowner also saw the assailant strike while reviewing his home’s security footage.

Dimitri Hepburn, the owner of the property where the sign was, called the man’s actions “shocking.”

“He took the time to turn it over so that it was face down,” Hepburn said. “It was … I don’t wanna say unbelievable, but shocking.” 

He continued, “It was a violation of my First Amendment rights. You have signs up in my own yard. It was a violation of our safety and privacy, I felt.” 

Candace Nadeen Breen, a Black resident of Rhode Island, also believes these “microaggressions” are used to intimidate and violate people’s sense of safety and privacy.

She said she received a letter on Jan. 16, 2021, that read in part, “Please remove your black lives matter Marxist anti-American paraphernalia as well as well. The angry Black Lives Matter has taken in billions and billions of dollars and never helped one black person and yet you bow down to this group. This is an embarrassment to this country.”

She was able to trace it back to a white woman, who happened to be her neighbor, named Laura Larrivee.

Larrivee is an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, who herself has signs planted in her yard celebrating Donald Trump and has decorated her yard with tombstones for former NFL player and activist Colin Kaepernick and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“This was a crime. It was an invasion of our space, it came into our house, and it’s wrong,” Breen told Atlanta Black Star. “The letter was so unhinged. It was a rant that really made no sense. None whatsoever. And those kinds of people can get violent.”

Like others who have had their homes targeted because they choose to place Black Lives Matter signs in their year, Breen said she feels “unsafe.”

“I felt very, very unsafe. This was hate,” she said. “I didn’t ask for this. I never, ever, ever bothered that person. Never sent them an email, never talked about them on social media. We aren’t like that, we don’t do that, which is why it’s very surprising that they came my way with that nonsense.”

Stealing a sign outside of someone’s home, whether it has a socio-political statement or campaigning for a specific politician, is considered a Class C misdemeanor in most states. In Connecticut, it is classified as “6th-degree larceny, which is defined as larceny where the value of the stolen property or services is $250 or less.”