Photo: GoFundMe / Twitter
“This is not a George Floyd situation," she says.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Jul 18, 2022
Protestors condemning the killing of a Black man shot by police on July 13 were confronted by the man's victim while demonstrating over the weekend.
20-year-old Andrew “Tekle” Sundberg from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was reportedly going through a mental health crisis when he began shooting at his neighbor, 24-year-old Arabella Foss-Yarbrough’s, apartment door.
Sundberg was shot dead by two police snipers after a six-hour standoff, causing Black Lives Matter protesters to arrive on the scene and protest another police killing — but Foss-Yarbrough saw it differently.
Andrew “Tekle” Sundberg's victim confronted Minneapolis protestors, slamming them for defending the shooter.
On Saturday, protesters at the scene of the shooting were yelled at by Foss-Yarbrough, who told them, “this is not a George Floyd situation. George Floyd was unarmed. This is not okay.”
The mother-of-two was cooking in her home on Wednesday night when Sundberg opened fire on her apartment, causing bullet holes to fly into the apartment and wreak havoc on her walls and her bathroom.
Fortunately, her children were physically unharmed in the attack, but Foss-Yarbrough worries about the implications the incident might have on their mental health.
She posted the aftermath of the bullets that ripped through her apartment on Facebook, showing broken glass all over her bathroom counter and a chewed-up front door.
“My kids have to deal with this and probably have a mental illness now because they almost lost their lives,” she yelled at protesters. “There’s bullet holes in my kitchen because he sat in the f---ing hallway watching my move.”
Some protesters fought back and defended Sundberg, yelling back that this wasn’t the time or place for her to react in this way — some even telling her to “shut up.”
Foss-Yarbrough claimed that the protesters didn’t actually care about the man and his mental health, saying “none of you knocked on that man’s door to check his health.”
“He tried to kill me in front of my kids,” she continued. “I have Black children; I am a woman of color! If I would have lost my life, would you guys do this for me?”
The protesters replied that they would, but she didn’t care.
The shooter’s father, Mark Sundberg, was actually among the protesters and apologized for his son’s actions.
“I am so sorry,” he told her. After she said that it wasn’t okay, he repeated “No, it's not, and I am so sorry that this happened.”
“My heart goes out to that woman (Yarbrough),” Mark told FOX9 News. “She went through a very traumatic event with those bullets coming through her house”
While they expressed remorse for what Foss-Yarbrough went through, they also believed that their son should not have been killed and that it should have been handled like a mental health crisis.
"It's two different incidents. It's the shots going through her (wall) and what we are here for, when Tekle was shot," said Mark.
"I literally had five minutes to live while he had six hours to choose life or death. The police stated they did not want to kill him," Yarbrough said.
Separate GoFundMe pages have been set up for both parties and both have raised tens of thousands of dollars.
Protesters demand that the Minneapolis Police Department do better, but also express their sympathies to Foss-Yarbrough, who does not believe the shooter deserves their defense.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.