It all began on the quiet afternoon of December 23, 1988, in Greensboro, North Carolina. 19-year-old Ken Dungee was picked up by three of his friends en route to do some last minute Christmas shopping. The four young African-American men planned to make the hour and a half trip to Raleigh on the I-40 Highway. It had been a good year for all of them. The driver, 17-year-old Lavern Allen, had just received a scholarship to the Air Force Academy. Ken Dungee was a drafting and engineering student, headed for college in the fall. 17-year old Kenneth Newkirk had just received a scholarship to a local college. And 17-year-old Darius Bannerman was a high school basketball star with a promising future. On their way to the shopping mall, the four passed a car driven by a man named Grady Alexander:
Monte Carlo car ramming the back of a black car
The Monte Carlo repeatedly rammed their car
“When they went by me, they were doing about 60, 65. I looked over, and one of the boys saw me looking at him, he grinned and waved, and the car kept on going. After that, another car came up on me very fast. And as it got by me, I happened to look down at the license plate, and I said to myself, ‘a redneck from Georgia.’ Because his hair looked like it was dirty and greasy and stringy. And he was probably doing 75 or 80.”
A few moments later, Lavern Allen noticed a blue Monte Carlo closing in at a high rate of speed:
“When I looked in the rear view mirror, I saw a car and he was so close to me, I could not see his front bumper. That’s how close he was. At first I just thought it was somebody tailgating, just riding close.”
Police officer tipping his hat to a grounded helicopter
Lavern Allen was airlifted to the hospital
Still weary from an earlier basketball practice, Darius Bannerman was napping in the front seat when he was suddenly woken up:
“I was sleeping and everyone in there was talking about this guy that’s following us. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, but, the guy was extremely close to the point where, you know, it was like right on our bumper. He bumped us, and it didn’t seem as though this was all happening… it was like, horror. Traffic was moving fast and we speeded up to get away from the guy. The man driving the Monte Carlo, he had a look like we had done something personal to him, like mad. It just looked like he wanted to hurt us.”