Imagine this, it’s summer and most kids are playing video games, swimming and on vacation. There’s one 12-year-old in Maple Heights, Ohio who decided to mow lawns to make some money.
Reggie Fields started Mr. Reggie’s Lawn Service. His sister and two cousins also provided assistance with sweeping and picking up clippings. They went to the local Dollar Tree to purchase a gas can and plastic lawn bags. That’s where they met their first customer Lucille Holt-Colden, 51. She decided to hire them to mow her lawn.
As Reggie and his assistants were finishing up her yard, a Maple Heights Police SUV rolled up in front of Holt-Colden’s house.
When Lucille saw the police through the window, she was surprised. Then, when she learned what had happened, she was angry – and reached for her cellphone to document the event.
“My neighbors that stay in that house right there,” she said, swiveling the phone as it recorded her on video. “So I guess I have a line where part of it is not my yard. They called the police to tell the police that the kids was cutting their grass. Who does that? Who does that?”
When the police came, Holt-Colden said, Reggie’s 9-year-old cousin was frozen with fear in her driveway, worried that he was in trouble.
But Reggie kept mowing. The children were not cited or stopped by the police in any way.
Still, Holt-Colden said she was upset that a lawman responded in the first place.
It’s a sad day in America when a black 12-year-old entrepreneur cannot mow the lawn without the police being called. #sad
Bernadette
I can see calling the cops if he was damaging property but to mow the yard. They need to leave the kid alone. What a good boy