An Oklahoma dance trio—two black men and a 13 year-old white girl—traveled to Houston to spend a weekend dancing and training with some industry professionals. Exhausted after a night of practicing at the studio, they pulled into a gas station to check the GPS and find the hotel. That is when Emmanuel Hurd began to doze off and cops surrounded the car.
"They just pulled us out of the car and put our hands behind our backs like we were criminals," Hurd told the news station.
"The officer asked me 'who’s the girl?' and I said, 'she’s my student,'” said Hurd.
"I told him I had a notarized letter from her parents stating that we have full guardianship over her while we’re here."
The three dancers told news station KHOU that they pleaded with the police, telling them their story.
"They still put handcuffs on me and it really scared me," said the girl, Landry Thompson, 13. "And they put me in the back of a cop car and I was terrified."
Thompson was taken to Child Protective Services.
"I was horrified," said Destiny Thompson, Landry's mother, told the news station. "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."
Following repeated phone calls to officials, her daughter was released back into the custody of her instructors.
"I would love an apology," said Thompson.
Police officials still aren’t commenting about what happened, the news station reports.
Read more at KHOU.