Woman ‘accused of being Mexican’ lodges complaint

Brenda Flax of Kennett says man showed up at her door and began screaming at her

KENNETT SQUARE » When Brenda Flax heard a loud knock on her door last Friday at 6:15 a.m., she feared the worst. Her husband, who works as a police officer in Harrisburg, had left the house at 5 a.m.

“Normally, I wouldn’t open the

door,” said Flax, who lives on East Linden Street. “But my first impression was that this might be bad news because my husband didn’t call to let me know he arrived for work.”

Flax now regrets opening the door.

“I was standing there, in my night clothes, and it was my worst fear,” she said. “This guy snatched the door and opened it and blocked it so I couldn’t close the door if I wanted to. He never identified himself, and he started screaming asking where my husband was, and what mushroom farm he worked at.”

Flax told the man, dressed in all black with a bulletproof vest and a badge, that her husband works as a police officer in Harrisburg, but he would not believe her.

“The whole time, this guy was intimidating, forceful and aggressive,” she said. “I started to get concerned. He kept telling me I was lying.”

Flax then went to peer out of her door, and saw a huge muscled man folding

his arms in the driveway. She looked for marked police vehicles but saw only a white pickup truck.

“He told me he knows 90 percent of the people in Kennett Square and they are all Mexicans,” Flax said. “I told him I wasn’t Mexican, but he didn’t believe me.”

Flax then called him a racist and demanded he get off her property. He started to walk away, but as he left said: “You better hope you’re not Mexican because Donald Trump is president and he’s getting rid of all you people. He’s sending you back from where you came from.”

That statement put fear into Flax.

“At that point I was terrified,” she said. “I called my husband.”

Since the men had no identification, her husband could do little to help. She filed a report with Kennett Square Police but was told they couldn’t do much since the men weren’t physically violent and didn’t touch Flax. She also had no way to identify the men.

After some investigation, it turns out the men were from Par North America, a nationwide provider of vehicle transition services,

and were there to repossess a car. But there was a mix-up in paperwork and the men should not have been at the Flax house, according to representatives at Par North America, who said they do not condone the type of behavior that was explained by Flax. There is no video of the confrontation, and the identities of the men cannot be confirmed.

The following day, June 24, Brenda Flax and her husband Derrick went to state police at Avondale to lodge a complaint, which was forwarded to Kennett Square police who conducted an investigation.

“The level of conduct by these men never rose to anything criminal in nature,” said Bill Holdsworth, Kennett Square police chief. “Somebody accusing you of being Mexican is not a crime.”

Holdsworth said the investigation is continuing.

“I have never been disrespected in all my life like that, and that kind of hatred,” Brenda Flax said. “I am African-American, and I’ve experienced racism before, but never to this extent. People of Kennett need to know this type of thing is going on.”