Last Friday, D’Arreion Toles, a black man living in St. Louis, returned to his home as usual. His neighbor, now identified as Hilary Brooke Mueller, a white woman, tried to stop him from entering the apartment building they both reside in.
Mueller wanted proof that Toles lived in the building, and asked for his apartment number. As is shown in the video Toles recorded of their interaction and later posted to social media, Mueller literally blocks him from entering the building.
When Toles is finally able to enter, she follows him back inside the building, and in fact, into the elevator. Watch the awful interaction below.
“So now you’re going to follow me?” He said to her while in the elevator.
“I am,” she said.
She then followed him literally to his door and stood by while Toles unlocked his door. At this point, she seemingly tries to change her tune, by saying if they’re neighbors, she wants to get to know him. Understandably, Toles is unenthused at the prospect.
According to Toles, she called the police, because they appeared at his door about 30 minutes later.
Since the video was posted to Facebook, it has gone viral. Now, Mueller has lost her job.
Mueller was employed by Tribeca-STL, which manages real estate in St. Louis. To clarify, Tribeca does not own the building where Toles and Mueller live.
They issued the following statement:
“The Tribeca-STL family is a minority-owned company that consists of employees and residents from many racial backgrounds,” officials with the company, an apartment complex in St. Louis, said. “We are proud of this fact and do not and never will stand for racism or racial profiling at our company.”
Toles handled the situation with incredible grace. At this point, he is actually urging people not to go after Mueller.
“Some people think I should have went after her more,” he told the New York Times in an interview. “I’m not going to go after her. My whole purpose is to turn this negative into a positive.”
Of course, Toles should have never been put into this position to begin with. People of color, and especially black Americans, are policed seemingly without end by not just literal law enforcement, but complete strangers.
White people, likely emboldened by systemic privilege and the assumption that the police will have their back, have no problem questioning, harassing, and otherwise disrupting the lives of black Americans who are simply trying to exist.
Recently, a white woman called the police and falsely accused a 9-year-old boy of sexual assault. A different white woman called security on a black man simply pushing his child in a stroller in their local park. Not long ago, two black men had the police called on them because they sat in a Starbucks.
And these calls to the police aren’t just inconvenient or offensive: they’re dangerous.
Black men, in particular, face disproportionate levels of violence from police, making Mueller’s behavior even more disturbing. In an email to the New York Times, the Metropolitan Police Department in St. Louis said it responded to a 911 call that “was made because the caller did not know if the male subject was a tenant.”
Toles was calm and collected, and effectively deescalated a conflict he did nothing to start. When the police arrived at his door, Toles was able to explain he was renting the unit. If a different officer had arrived, how might the situation have gone? No one should be blocked from entering their home because of a racist neighbor, much less be put in life-endangering scenarios with police.
"Do you live here?" Mueller said in the video. "I'm uncomfortable."
"You can be uncomfortable," Toles replied. "That's your discretion. You're uncomfortable because you're you." He is, sadly, right.