NORWAY — A Paris man has been named in a complaint under the Maine Civil Rights Act for allegedly threatening violence against a Black woman during an encounter on Deering Street last month.
Attorney General Aaron M. Frey filed the complaint in Oxford County Superior Court against 22-year-old Tyler Tripp, for reportedly threatening violence against a 20-year-old Black woman on June 27.
The complaint requests the court to order that Tripp have no contact with the woman or her family and commit no future violations of the Maine Civil Rights Act.
According to the state’s complaint, the woman was walking with a friend along Deering Street in Norway when a car drove up to them at a high rate of speed. The woman yelled at the car to slow down, according to the court document, at which point Tripp got out the car and called her a racial slur. He then threatened to hang her from a tree, according to the report.
“He went on to say that she ‘deserved’ to be hanged due to her race, again, using a racial epithet,” according to an A.G.s Office news release issued Thursday.
Investigators said Tripp later admitted to a Norway police officer that he made the threat.
“Racist threats of violence have no place in Maine,” Frey wrote in the release. “No person should be threatened with violence due to the color of that person’s skin. Defendant’s use of the imagery of lynching is even more abhorrent in a civil society. I will use my authority under the Civil Rights Act to stop threats of violence before they escalate into physical harm.”
The Maine Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1992 and prohibits the use of violence, the threat of violence or property damage against any person motivated by that person’s race, color, religion, sex, ancestry, national origin, physical or mental disability or sexual orientation.
Any violation of an order under the act is a Class D crime, punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Norway police investigated the incident.
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