The white woman accused of making racist comments and starting a fight at a McKinney, Texas, community pool earlier in June said on Tuesday that she did not use racial slurs while arguing with black teenagers at the pool party.
“My kids were screaming and traumatized,” Tracey Carver, the woman identified as one of two individuals who started a fight at the community pool, said in a statement, according to the Dallas Morning News. “I walked out to defuse the fight and did just that. I didn’t beat anyone nor use racial slurs of any kind.”
Witnesses said that after two women used racial slurs toward black pool party guests, the verbal fight quickly escalated into a physical one. Carver was then allegedly identified as one of the women in this video of the altercation by Dallas Communities Organizing for Change. She was placed on administrative leave from her job at CoreLogic.
Carver said in the statement that she had to relocate to California after death threats were made against her, and she outlined the events leading up to an altercation between a friend of hers and a guest at the pool party.
She said that some pool party guests became angry when the pool’s security guard asked for their key cards. When Carver went to leave the pool, some of the guests yelled, “Go home, bye, black haters,” according to Carver’s statement.
“It was nearly impossible to exit the gate because it was lined 3 rows deep with dozens of what appeared to be disrespectful, unruly and violent teens and young adults,” Carver said in the statement.
A teen yelled racial slurs at one of Carver’s friends, claiming that the pool was public, according to Carver. She said that after her friend informed one of the pool party guests that the pool was not public, a woman charged at Carver’s friend and grabbed her hair.
That’s when Carver stepped in to try to break up the fight, she said in the statement.
Civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred was hired to defend Carver.
“I have agreed to support Tracey and her family, because I am very concerned that the movement for racial equality suffers a serious setback when innocent individuals are wrongly accused of making racist statements based on false rumors and find themselves and their children being threatened that they will be raped and murdered,” Allred said in a statement.
McKinney police officer Eric Casebolt resigned earlier this month after a video showed him slamming a 15-year-old to the ground while responding to complaints about the pool party.
