SACRAMENTO —
A Sacramento family said they were the victims of a hate crime while on a camping trip at Rollins Lake in Nevada County last weekend.
Now members of that family hope the District Attorney’s Office presses charges.
“I’ve been in car accidents, you know, you go through tense and scary situations in life, but nothing like this,” Kanisha Allen told FOX40.
Allen and her family were threatened with what they thought was a weapon by a man who was screaming racial slurs at them.
“The guy ran down the hill with a shovel and you’re in the dark, I thought he had a shot gun,” Allen said.
She said her family’s reunion started peacefully.
“Have fun on the lake, we pitched the tents, we bring the food, we cook the ribs,” Allen recalled.
But a second group came to the campsite next to theirs Friday. She said they were making a lot of noise.
“Some of the other campers from the rowdier group were just staring over and making racial comments,” she said.
But Allen said her family ignored them and tried not to interact.
“We let it roll off of our backs,” Allen told FOX40.
Then the next night, one man in particular started to yell at Allen’s family, using even more hateful language.
“I didn’t come here to sleep next to any F-ing Ns, (is what he said),”Allen recalled.
Allen said that’s when her family had enough and told campsite employees, hoping they would help defuse the situation. But it only made matters worse, as campsite employees told FOX40 the same man also threatened them. He then turned his anger at Allen’s family.
“Whatever was said infuriated the main aggressor of the group, and all you hear is him saying the ‘n’ word, ‘I’m going to kill you F-ing Ns,'” Allen said.
That was when the man started to run toward their campsite, holding what Allen thought was a shot gun.
“It was terrifying, I have a 9-month-old daughter, and I grabbed her and the only thing that I could think of was you need to go down the ravine and hide next to the water because we didn’t know what was happening,” Allen said.
In the chaos, Allen’s mother who is in her 60s, fell down while running away, receiving cuts and bruises to her face.
“(My mother was alive during the Civil Rights movement and) to have to relive some of the things that she had gone through in her younger years today, it is almost unbelievable,” Allen said.
Allen’s family called the police, who later found the man trying to leave the campsite as he heard the sirens. But sheriff’s deputies told FOX40 no weapons were found on him, so he was not arrested.
The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office said the investigation is still ongoing, and the DAs office might still file charges. But Allen said that’s not good enough for her.
“They didn’t think that he was drunk, and didn’t find any weapons on him and for some reason or another decided to let him go … We expressed that we had feared for our lives, you know? And still nothing was done at that point,” Allen said.
A campsite manager said the man and his party have been banned from the campsite.
