At the end of June, the story of 12-year-old Maple Heights, Ohio, entrepreneur Reginald Fields and his summer lawn mowing business got passed around the internets. He and his younger siblings and cousins were mowing Lucile Holt-Colden’s lawn in their Maple Heights neighborhood when neighbors—identified as Randy and Linda Krakora—called 911 on the kids for mistakenly mowing a single square foot of their lawn. The space the kids mowed connected to the edge of the property they were mowing. Holt filmed the event and posted the clip to Facebook, where it took off. A GoFundMe website was set up and Mr. Reginald Fields’ small business received a huge cash infusion from well-wishers across the world. Mic reports that Lucile Holt-Colden had a big Independence Day BBQ and invited Reggie and his family back for the festivities. Randy and Linda Krakora called the police’s “non-emergency” phone line on the kids—again.
“We have always been told by the police that if we feel threatened, ‘Don’t confront these people, just call us,’” Linda Krakora said during a recent phone interview. “We’re a slightly older couple. We have a white couple in their eighties next to us. If we feel it’s going to be more of an issue to go over trying to talk to somebody, for our safety, we just call the police.”
Why did they feel “threatened,” you ask? The kids were playing with water on a slip-n-slide … on the Fourth of July … in 80 degree temperatures. According to Maple Heights police Lt. Joe Mocsiran, the Krakoras have placed 60 calls to the police over the past 18 years. So the good news is that they’re half racist and half just unfortunately terrified people.
According to Mic, the Karokas also have their son, his wife and their grandchildren living with them. The argument that they are “an elderly couple” alone in this hellish landscape where grade-school kids play with water on July 4th during an outdoor BBQ is … bullshit. According to a live-video Holt-Colden posted to her Facebook page, the police sent over two police cars for the call. In the video below you can see the kids playing with the back yard with a small kid’s pool, and some tarps laid down to protect Holt-Colden’s lawn. Holt-Colden says that the police told her the complaint was that the kids had sprayed the Krakoras’ home with water and knocked down some roof shingles. The police did not seem to find any evidence that that happened, though they noted a fence board was “damaged.”
Lt. Mocsiran says that the Krakora crew is using the non-emergency line, and in doing so they are not breaking any laws by relentlessly calling police on grade-school black kids. The Krakora clan is very defensive and has even upped the ante on why they cannot talk civilly with their neighbors about any misgivings they may have.
But Linda Krakora said her family will not participate in any mediation with Holt-Colden, because she’s angry that one of Holt-Colden’s children allegedly threatened to kill Randy Krakora and the Krakoras’ 18-month old grandchild over the dispute — an accusation Holt-Colden denies.
But Krakora also says all kinds of things about how Holt-Colden is to blame for “making this about race,” and how Holt-Colden has brought all of these people around the world to harass and threaten the Krakoras via social media. And while the demographics have shifted in areas like Maple Heights Ohio, from white to less white, Linda Krakora says she’s no bigot.
“We’ve seen this community change,” Linda Krakora said. “If we were racists, we would have moved out of Maple Heights a long time ago, but we didn’t. We stayed.”
Of course, Krakora first began calling the police on her neighbor in November, reporting what she suspected was a “stolen car,” in Holt-Colden’s backyard; Holt-Colden’s son was fixing to restore the old car. According to both Holt-Colden and the Krakora, Linda’s husband used to do odd jobs like mowing the lawn for Holt-Colden, until Linda called the police saying that Lucille’s son was screaming during a spanking. It’s a very strange situation. There seems to be a mixture of racism and … something else at work over at the Krakora household.