Grab your popcorn for this real life horror story. What began as a typical trip to Denny’s turned into an eerie honesty hour for a Black truck driver when an elderly white ex-firefighter made a confession. But the older man’s regrets were not only racist, but deadly.
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Shamar Alion took the clock app to share his interaction with an 89-year-old man who was celebrating his birthday. He said he took a pit stop from truck driving to run into Denny’s and sat down to eat across from the man’s birthday party. After all the guests left, Alion said he went over to the man to share some birthday wishes.
“Happy birthday, young man. Eighty-nine, that’s a lot of memory to have,” Alion said.
“Thank you… there are way too many things that I wish I could forget,” the man responded.
Nothing could have prepared Alion for what was going to happen next. The two began to talk about the man’s life over the past decades. To Alion’s inquiry about the regrets he may have had, the man looked at him and said, “You have no idea…”
Alion said the man told him he used to be a firefighter in the 60s and 70s which he described as a “very different time.” He then said that it was very common in those days for “firefighters who look like him” to leave people that look like Alion (ahem, Black people) in burning houses and write it off as not being able to get to them. He then recalled to Alion hearing the screams of the Black people and children left in houses, cars or even stores that were set ablaze. The man said he pretended he didn’t hear it.
The old man told Alion his last straw was when it came to saving an infant. Despite making eye contact with the baby, he faked as if he was going to save them and left the child. Then, he quit the fire department. Since then, the man told Alion he still suffers with nightmares from those instances and hasn’t forgiven himself for what he’d done.
For Alion, he said he was left shook by the realization that racism wasn’t just exclusive to crooked cops, lawyers or judges.
“Police officers, we knew they didn’t give a fuck but I don’t know why that didn’t click to me that it was everybody that hated us… everybody had a hand in deliberately making our lives worse,” Alion said at the end of the video.
Eerily enough, this video comes a year after a Flint mother sued the city and fire department for the same claim: leaving her two Black boys for dead. Per The Daily Beast, two white firefighters left the boys inside a burning home and lied about clearing the room they were stuck in. Each of the firefighters involved have since resigned.
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