Jamaria Gaskins and Amylah Majors requested that Spotsylvania County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ryan Mehaffey pursue hate crime charges against two Partlow residents following a July 20 incident in which the Black lesbian couple suffered injuries in a car crash.
Gaskins and Majors, who live in Richmond, alleged that, after they drove over some debris and stopped on Partlow Road, three nearby residents exited their home. They alleged that they then shouted racial slurs, brandished a firearm, and one exposed his backside before pursuing the couple and causing Gaskins to wreck their vehicle.
Mark Goodman was charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor of incident exposure. Elizabeth Wolfrey was charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor of brandishing a firearm.
In an interview with the Free Press on Tuesday morning, Mehaffey agreed that, based on the allegations, hate crime charges were worth pursuing.
But after all the results from an investigation were submitted to a special grand jury, it’s Gaskins and Majors who find themselves facing criminal charges. Both are charged with obtaining money by false pretenses and filing a false report to law enforcement. Majors is also facing a Class 1 misdemeanor charge of reckless driving.
The grand jury issued the indictments on Nov. 13 with a recommended bond of $5,000 and pretrial supervision. The charge of obtaining money over $1,000 by false pretense from another with intent to defraud is a felony punishable by one to 20 years in prison, according to the indictment. The charge of filing a false police report is a Class 1 misdemeanor.
“It was requested to me that the incident on Partlow Road be investigated as a hate crime,” Mehaffey said. “I agreed and pursued the investigation as a hate crime. The investigation and all the facts and circumstances that were the product of that investigation were presented to a special grand jury. The girls’ request for hate crime charges was presented, and the grand jury declined to issue hate crime charges and instead issued those charges.”
Goodman and Wolfrey are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday, but Mehaffey said the case will likely be continued “in light of this … so everything can kind of get reassessed.”
The charge of obtaining money by false pretenses stems from a crowdfunding effort on Gofundme.com by Gaskins and Majors that raised $21,131. The incident went viral online and drew the attention of social justice activists across the country. Mehaffey addressed concerns about the case with the NAACP and the community back in August.
On the GoFundMe post, Majors provided details of the incident, which she claimed landed her in the hospital with serious injuries
“As we tried to leave, all three of them jumped into vehicles and chased us down the road,” Majors stated. “One of them rode up beside us on a 4-wheeler and aimed a gun directly at my head through the driver’s window. In that moment, we truly believed we weren’t going to make it out alive. While fleeing, we were chased into a crash. I was ejected from the car.”
Majors wrote on gofundme.com that after the incident, she woke up in the hospital with a fractured spine, broken clavicle, broken rib, severe concussion, and multiple head injuries that required staples. Gaskins and Majors said they suffered concussions.
The couple provided a video of Goodman exposing his backside and a photo of Wolfrey holding a weapon but — crucially — no proof of the alleged chase. Goodman, Wolfrey and their attorney, Storr Burks, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story. Gaskins and Majors were unavailable for comment, as well.
