‘Teacher Karen threatened Black family with a GUN and baseball bat’ for driving car down her flooded street – The Sun
A TEACHER "Karen" faces assault charges after she allegedly brandished a gun and a baseball bat at a Black family driving down a flooded street.
Video posted on social media Monday shows Bridgette Digerolamo threatening Demetra Turner-Louis with a baseball bat on the front lawn of her home in Louisiana.
"Karen" is a term used to describe an entitled white woman.
Turner-Louis, who is Black, was driving home with her husband and daughter on Monday morning in Baton Rouge when they crossed paths with Digerolamo, a white woman, on a flooded residential street.
That's when the white woman allegedly pulled out a baseball bat and began smashing the Black family's car while shouting obscenities.
"As our truck approached her, she came to the car with the bad and started yelling and screaming, telling us to 'turn out f*****g truck around because her house is going to flood," Turner-Louis told the New York Daily News.
Digerolamo is later seen waving a gun at the truck in the shocking footage.
Her neighbors told WBRZ on Tuesday she became irate and smashed her car with the bat before running to grab a handgun.
"I was just worried that something might escalate," a neighbor said.
"She was very upset trying to stop the cars from coming from both ends, and it escalated from there very quickly."
Digerolamo's family had just finished renovating their house from a flood last year, the neighbors said, adding that they don't condone her aggressive behavior.
Turner-Louis told the Daily News she's lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade and is aware of the flooding issues.
But she noted that other neighbors who stood by the roadside politely asked drivers to pass through the floodwaters slowly, which according to WBRZ was between three and four inches on Monday when she drove past.
"You don't play with guns and threaten people," said Turner-Louis.
"If we had a gun it could have been a different outcome."
She said Digerolamo's husband tried to ask her and her husband to drop the criminal charges, but they refused.
"Her husband attempt to ask us… he spoke to my husband… if we would consider dropping the charges," Turner-Louis said.
"I said no. The gun could have gone off and I could be dead, and anyone else could be. She needs to understand that's not the way you do things."
Digerolamo was arrested on Monday and charged with aggravated assault with a firearm and criminal damage to property, New Orleans-based TV station WWL reported.
The 38-year-old teaches physical education in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, according to WBRZ.
She's now at the center of a workplace investigation.
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