Black pastor’s arrest for pulling gun on attackers was wrong, Virginia sheriff says

A sheriff in Virginia has apologized after a black pastor was arrested for pulling out a gun when a group of people attacked him.

Leon McCray, 61, said during a sermon posted on YouTube that he was “verbally and physically attacked” last week by a “mob” of five white people on his property in Edinburg.

McCray, pastor of Lighthouse Church & Marketplace Ministries International in Woodstock, said he had asked two people to leave his property when he saw them dragging a refrigerator to a dumpster. They later returned with three others and attacked him, he said.

McCray said the group made racial threats and said, “Black lives don’t matter. That’s BS. It doesn’t matter in this county and it doesn’t matter to me either.”

“I felt literally like I had been lynched without being killed,” McCray said during the sermon.

During the incident, McCray said, he pulled out a gun and pointed it at the ground, which caused the group to back off. He called 911, and the responding officers interviewed the group that had confronted him.

One officer talked to him but didn’t ask him for his side of the story, McCray said.

He was charged with a misdemeanor count of brandishing a firearm, WUSA9 reported.

Shenandoah County Sheriff Tim Carter said he spoke with a prosecutor and agreed to drop the charge against McCray, according to the news outlet.

“Mr. McCray was defending himself, and I believe Mr. McCray,” Carter told the station. “I believe if I had been there, this would have gone in a totally different direction.”

Police had received a 911 call about McCray having a gun, Carter said, according to The Northern Virginia Daily.

The other people involved in the incident face charges, Carter said without listing the charges.

This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 11:10 AM with the headline "Black pastor’s arrest for pulling gun on attackers was wrong, Virginia sheriff says."