A Florida teenager successfully defended herself against a man who allegedly tried to kidnap her on her way home from school.

The suspect stays at large and Lauderhill police said they were investigating the incident as an attempted kidnapping.

There is a $5,000 reward for information resulting in the man’s arrest.

Surveillance video from Monday, Oct. 7, shows the moment 13-year-old Kymorah Reid was getting off her school bus in Lauderhill, near Fort Lauderdale, when a man approached her from behind and grabbed her ankle.

“I was screaming at him and saying, ‘What are you doing? Get off me” – Kymorah he said local station WPLG.

The girl kicked the man and ran away, screaming for help. The attacker fled on foot.

Kymorah returned home in a panic and told her mother what had just happened, but when she ran outside, the suspect was gone.

Kymorah suffered scratches to her ankle and elbow, but was otherwise tremendous.

“We don’t know if she was followed (or) if this guy was just covering the area, waiting for a potential victim,” Officer Antonio Gonzales told the station. “She was definitely a brave child who was willing to put up a fight.”

The attack occurred along the 5000 block of Northwest 18th Court, where the girl claims she heard a man approaching from behind.

“I heard this guy running like he was running, so I got out of his way,” she said.

Kymorah’s mother, Lois Kerr, was shocked to see footage of her daughter’s attack. However, she was grateful that Kymorah escaped the incident unscathed.

“It was devastating. Everything gets on your nerves” – Kerr he said NBC Miami. “They tried to kidnap my daughter, it was like everything inside me shifted, like it turned upside down.”

The suspect was described as a light-skinned black male, possibly in his late teens or early 20s, with short hair. At the time of the incident he was wearing a yellow T-shirt and red shorts.

After this terrifying event, Kymorah warned the other children to concentrate on their surroundings.

“Be careful, because you never know when someone will sneak up on you and kidnap you, and you will never see your family and friends again,” she said.

Since the incident, Kerr said she has been reassuring Kymorah as she waits for news that the man who attacked her daughter will probably be caught soon.

“She’s safe. She’s going to be OK and I won’t leave her side,” Kerr said. “He must seek Jesus, and secondly, he must give himself.”

In the final months of the Biden-Harris White House, the administration is touting the significant gains for Black-owned businesses over the past 4 years and dealing to make sure those successes proceed as President-elect Donald Trump and his administration take office.

Last week, the SBA celebrated a record variety of business applications under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris – greater than 20 million, the most in a single presidential term in U.S. history.

While it’s unclear how a lot of those 20 million businesses were black-owned due to how federal data is collected, the White House noted that the variety of black households (5% to 11%) and ZIP codes with dominant racial populations black that reported ownership, the small company made significant profits.

“There has been research done that shows that small business applications increased by 198% in neighborhoods where at least 75% of the residents identify as Black,” Guzman said, adding, “It has been an incredible boom in Black entrepreneurship.”

There has been the same increase amongst women and others working at corporations owned by corporations of color.

Administrator Guzman noted that business activity growth has continued over the past few years following the pandemic, and in some cases there was significant expansion by way of geographic location and sort of business.

“We’re seeing continued growth in technology-related businesses, including digital e-commerce… they’re increasingly doing their business online and really pushing the envelope there, and we’ve seen trends of people moving out of urban centers and into other communities,” Guzman shared.

She noted that these “high-propensity businesses” mean they are “more likely to create jobs.”

Excluding the profits of black corporations, they represent only 3% of all corporations in the US, despite the fact that black Americans constitute 14% of the total population, According to to Pew Research. By comparison, white American-owned businesses make up 85% of all businesses. According to a report by the Brookings Institution emphasizesAt current growth rates, it might take Black businesses 256 years to succeed in the level of the entire Black population.

“Realistically, these growth rates lag significantly behind the pace that could alleviate racial disparities in employer-business ownership in the near future, and large structural barriers across the economy – including, but not limited to, the racial nature of investment – ​​continue to undermine transformational change,” the Brookings report said. “Given that many of these disparities are structural, solutions must be structural as well.”

The SBA has also implemented reforms akin to simplifying certification and protecting the 8A program, which provides training and federal contracts for socially and economically disadvantaged small business owners.

Despite noticeable gains for Black-owned businesses under the Biden-Harris administration, there are concerns about what a second Trump administration would mean for them in the coming years.

In addition to his latest administration’s hostility toward racial equality, Trump’s first term was criticized for the SBA’s management of the PPP loan program during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to multiple fraud cases, Black and brown businesses have disproportionately failed to profit from the loan forgiveness program.

Congresswoman Clarke, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said any “abrupt policy change” regarding closing racial disparities in small businesses would end in Black businesses “withering on the vine just as they are growing.”

“We will need to make sure that the law is applied equally to all small businesses and that Black communities do not pay the price for… a vindictive administration,” Clarke said.

Guzman said President Biden “has been clear that diversity is our strength in this country”; he said what the SBA did “in a major way” set “a standard on which we can continue to build,” including tripling federal lending to black-owned businesses because of this of the administration’s “historic access to capital” reforms.

“Unless these changes are reversed,” she added.

For the first time in history, Alabama sends two Black representatives to the House of Representatives at the same time.

According to the so-called a feat that was not achieved even during Reconstructionthe post-Civil War era when black political power in the South was expanded as the United States attempted to include newly emancipated former slaves from the former Confederacy into full participation as American residents.

Shomari Figurs will represent Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District once he wins the seat in the November 2024 election.

This was made possible by court-ordered redistricting, which allowed the district’s black residents to elect their representatives.

On November 8, Numbers released an announcement saying it understood the importance of the case that allowed him and Republican Terri Sewell to concurrently represent Alabama in the House of Representatives.

“The opportunity for fair representation is an essential element of democracy because it gives people from different backgrounds the opportunity to make sure their voices are heard and their interests are represented,” Figura said.

Rep. Sewell, who represents Alabama’s seventh Congressional District, said the election results reflect the power of “having people in office who will fight for the issues that are important to us and the values ​​that we share.”

She continued: “The power of too many black voters in Alabama has been diluted by unfair congressional maps. By sending Shomari data to Washington, these voters finally have a chance to have a seat at the decision-making table. I look forward to having him as my partner in Congress and working on behalf of all Alabamians, especially those whose voices have not yet been fully heard.”

During Reconstruction, when the state’s population was much different than today, Alabama sent three Black men to the House of Representatives, but none of their terms overlapped.

Today, Alabama’s population is roughly 64% white and 27% black, and voter suppression that occurred shortly after the last of the three men, Rep. Jeremiah Haralson, left office in 1877 shapes black political representation in Alabama .

It wasn’t until 1992, greater than a century after Haralson left office, that Alabama sent its next black representative to Congress, Earl Hilliard, who represented Alabama’s majority-black seventh District.

For many years, the seventh District was Alabama’s only probability district, but after a federal court ordered Alabama to redraw the 2nd Congressional District, it became the state’s second-chance district.

This v case remains to be pending. Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the case, told the website he remains to be unsure whether the lawsuit could lead to greater representation of Black Alabamians.

“At no point was it a foregone conclusion. I will say this, but it is still not the case because it is a topical issue. The only reason the law needs to say this is because of the decades of resistance the state of Alabama has had to uniformly enforce civil rights and voting rights protections in every branch and at every stage of the democratic process,” Milligan said.

He continued: “I think that in every generation we have a chance to keep our state and keep our nation with the values ​​enshrined in our Constitution, because freedom, justice and fairness are words of action.”

Bernard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, can also be a plaintiff in the lawsuit and shares Milligan’s concerns, but hopes the court will uphold the lawsuit’s results.

“I think the courts can’t help but recognize that the state of Alabama has acted in such a way as to create confusion in the district and that they will rule in favor of keeping the district as it is,” Simelton told the Journal.

He continued: “It showed that once again, when Black people are given the opportunity to get elected and go to the polls, they will do it and choose the person they want to represent them.”