HOUSTON, TX – Houston Police decided that two African-American dance instructors had no business being with their 13-year-old white student over the weekend.
Emmanuel Hurd had signed notarized papers with him granting him custody of his student, Landry Thompson, while they attended a dance workshop in Houston, according to KHOU.
Hurd, Thompson, and another dance instructor stopped at a Valero gas station and were trying to find directions to their hotel when police surrounded them, demanding to know who the girl was.
“I said, ‘she’s my student’. I told him I had a notarized letter from her parents stating that we have full guardianship over her while we’re here,” Hurd said.
The police either did not believe it or did not care, and handcuffed the trio while placing Landry Thompson into the back of a car.
“It really scared me…I was terrified,” Thompson recalled.
Destiny Thompson was shocked when she heard what had happened to her daughter. “She was with the people I wanted her to be with. She was with people I trusted. And now she was taken away from those people and in a shelter with people I didn’t know.”
Officials reportedly demanded that the mother fly to Houston from Oklahoma to pick up her daughter. After 11 hours in the custody of Child Protective Services, Thompson was finally released back to Hurd.
The HPD could not be reached for comment, but Destiny Thompson believes they owe her, and her daughter, an apology.
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