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A black man arrived at the entrance of the building where he resides in St. Louis late Friday night to find himself stuck by a white neighbor who demanded that he prove that he was living there.
"Please, move, ma'am," the man, Arreion Toles, said in a video that he had recorded from the meeting, showing the woman with her Dog on a leash standing on the threshold of the condominium complex, the Older Lofts Shirt. .
"I can," she replies. "Do you live here?"
"I've already answered that question," answers Mr. Toles, age 24, who continues to try to enter. "Excuse me."
But the woman, Hilary Brooke Mueller, refused to budge as she continued to ask Mr. Toles in which unit he was living and to see his keychain. When he refused to tell her, she stayed on her way.
"If you want to enter my building -" she begins to say in the video.
"It's not your building, you're not the owner," Mr. Toles says. "Excuse me."
Tribeca-STL, Ms. Mueller's employer, who manages real estate elsewhere in the city, said in a statement posted on her website that the video had been viewed and licensed. Tribeca does not own the building where Mr. Toles and Mrs. Mueller live.
"The Tribeca-STL family is a minority-owned corporation that includes employees and residents from many racial backgrounds," said company officials, an apartment complex located in St. Louis. "We are proud of this fact and do not defend or defend racism or racial profiling in our company."
Mr. Toles said Sunday about 30 minutes after arriving at his unit that a police officer knocked on his door and told him that Ms. Mueller felt "uncomfortable" at the idea that Mr. Toles be present. He stated that he told the officer that he was renting the unit and that he had shown Ms. Mueller her keychain.
Neither Ms. Mueller nor the police could be contacted for comment on Sunday.
This was the last known case of White, taken in a video, confronting – and sometimes calling on the police – a Black man performing daily activities, such as babysitting, lunch or going to the pool.
In a Brooklyn store last week, a white woman called the police after claiming that a young black boy had touched her behind. (He did not do it.) In July, a black Oregon state legislator said that she had been presented to the police as a "suspect person" while that she was talking with voters from a suburban neighborhood.
In an interview on Sunday, Toles said he took out his phone to record the meeting "because I did not feel safe in this situation."
He added, "At the end of the day, why would she call the police on me? I just came in and went to my house.
He said he was worried that the situation would be similar to the one that occurred in Dallas last month when a black man was killed in his apartment as a result of the entry of one. White police officer, claiming that she thought it was his unit.
"It's a bit like hitting me again thinking about all of this," he said of his meeting. "It's pretty sad."
He said it gave him the impression "we could not be who we are in America".
In one of the videos, Mr. Toles is in an elevator and Ms. Mueller follows him. He says, "So now are you going to follow me?"
"I am," she replies.
In another video, she follows him down a hall, claiming that she wants to show up because he's a neighbor.
"I do not want to talk to you," he says. "Please, stop following me. I will call the cops for harassment. This is my next step. "
The latest video shows Ms. Mueller outside her unit, with Mr. Toles at the entrance. "You just followed me to my door," he says. "And you see my keys in the door."
"As a record, I just want to say," Hello, what's your name? She began to say before Mr. Toles interrupted him.
"Madam, you come … no. Have a good night, ma'am, he said. "Never do that again."
Brandon Mueller, the ex-husband of Ms. Mueller, said in an interview Sunday that he had been shocked to learn the meeting after receiving messages and notifications on Facebook.
On Facebook, Mr. Mueller, who has a black father and a white mother, has posted a video in which he says he is disappointed by what happened. He stated that he had been separated from Ms. Mueller for more than a year and that he had not lived in the Elder Shirt Lofts building for so long.
He said he did not tolerate Ms. Mueller's actions and sent a Facebook message to Mr. Toles to show his support. Mr Mueller said that Mr Toles had handled the situation in an "exceptional" way.
Mr. Toles, who runs a marketing consulting firm, urged people not to bother Ms. Mueller.
"Some people think I should have pursued it further," he said. "I will not pursue it. My goal is to turn this negative into positive. "
Matthew Haag contributed to the report.
Follow Melissa Gomez on Twitter: @ MelissaGomez004.
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