Claremont
Appearing on the daytime TV talk show The Real, Quincy Chivers, now 9 years old, recalled the incident involving himself and at least two other juveniles in the backyard of a home near Barnes Park in August.
Quincy, who is biracial, told the show’s hosts that a 14-year-old teen grabbed a tire swing rope and put it around his own neck, jokingly saying that he no longer wished to keep on living.
Shortly after, Quincy said, it was his turn to put the rope around his own neck, and he did so because he “wanted to be cool.”
“Then the 13-year-old boy, he scooched closer to me, so I felt scared for a second and then after that second when I felt scared, he pushed me off the picnic table. … It just happened so fast,” Quincy said.
Quincy’s 11-year-old sister, Ayanna Chivers, witnessed the incident, and also spoke during the nearly 6½-minute segment.
She said she realized the situation was more than play when one of the teens was throwing “things” at Quincy and pushing him around. She said a teen also threw dirt in her face.
“When Quincy put the rope around his neck … and when (the teen) was close, I knew that something was going to happen and that’s when he pushed him off,” Ayanna said.
The children’s mother, Cassandra Merlin, said she regards the incident as a “hate crime.”
“My feeling on this was that it was a hate crime given the fact that what the kids had told me, that (the teens) had been throwing out racial slurs to them throughout the day, and continued to say things like ‘white pride,’ ” Merlin said.
When Merlin came to Quincy’s aid after the incident, the teens also yelled the words “white pride” at her, she told the hosts.
“My first thought was that I had hoped my son was even still alive,” Merlin said. “I was in panic mode. It is something that a mother should never have to witness. … I had a whirlwind of emotions that just kind of hit me at once.”
After the incident, she said, she called the Claremont Police Department and made a report, and took Quincy to a hospital. Officials then airlifted him to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. His wounds weren’t visible in the taping.
Merlin said the police department first dismissed the incident as an accident and hasn’t been forthcoming with information about what happened.
“I had to make my own phone calls and to just say, ‘Hey, listen, what is going on with this?’ ” Merlin said. “My fear is that I don’t even want my kids to go outside anymore. I don’t even let them out the door without me. I want them to feel safe and I want to know that our police department is doing something about it. But they have not given me any updates at all. It hasn’t been something that they have involved me in by any means.”
Although the Claremont Police Department first investigated, the state Attorney General’s Office has since taken over. Claremont Police Chief Mark Chase has said little about what investigators think happened, citing laws that protect juveniles.
On Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General Jane Young said the investigation is ongoing. She had nothing new to report.
When asked if the family had been compensated for its appearance, a publicist for the show said on Tuesday that she could not comment on any guest agreements.
The television interview came about 10 days after one of the teenager’s parents, Eric Sullivan and Rhianna Larkin, called the situation “a complete backyard incident” with no racial motivation in a Newsweek interview.
They acknowledged that their son attempted to pull a prank on Quincy, who they said was startled and jumped off a picnic table with the rope around his neck. Larkin denied he was pushed.
Merlin told the hosts of The Real that she hopes to spread awareness about racial discrimination.
“Racism is so real in our country and it is an absolute problem,” Merlin said. “I never want someone as a mother or somebody’s child to ever have to experience something like that.”
Quincy broke down when he was asked how he is coping with the situation.
“The kids at school, they keep asking me what happened and stuff, and it brings me back to the day and it just makes me live through the day that it happened … ” he said, trailing off in tears.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.