Woman Assaulted Black Boy Who ‘Did Not Belong’ at Pool, Officials Say

First, there was BBQ Becky.

Then came Permit Patty.

Now, a South Carolina woman has been nicknamed Pool Patrol Paula after a widely shared video showed her accosting a black boy and his friends at a neighborhood pool, telling them to “get out” or she would call the police.

“There’s three numbers I could dial: 911. OK?” the woman said in the video, which was posted on Facebook on June 24 and was viewed more than 1 million times in a week. “Get out! Little punks.”

Authorities identified the woman as Stephanie Sebby-Strempel, 38, of Summerville, South Carolina, according to The News & Observer. The newspaper reported that she told the boy, 15, and his friends that “they did not belong” at the pool, instructed them to leave and hit the teenager in his face and chest.

The teenager had been invited to the private community pool by a friend who lived in the neighborhood, his lawyer, Marvin Pendarvis, said.

Sebby-Strempel was charged with third-degree assault related to the teenager, as well as two counts of assaulting a police officer while resisting arrest, The News & Observer reported.

She could not be reached for comment. Representatives for the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office were unavailable to comment.

The episode comes after other cases of police being called on black people for minor or nonexistent transgressions, such as taking a nap in a Yale University common room or sitting down and asking to use the restroom in a Starbucks without buying anything.

Some of these cases — often involving white people — have spawned alliterative nicknames for those at the center of the episode: #BBQBecky, for a white woman in Oakland, California, who called police on black men for using a charcoal grill in a park; #PermitPatty, for a white woman in San Francisco who appeared to call authorities on an 8-year-old black girl for “illegally selling water without a permit”; and now #PoolPatrolPaula, for Sebby-Strempel.

Sebby-Strempel appeared to target the only black children at the pool at the time, Pendarvis said. He said his client’s name was not being released because he is a minor.

“She obviously took a look at them and said they don’t belong there,” Pendarvis said. “She had no reason to single them out. They weren’t doing anything.”

It’s unclear what happened leading up to the video clip, which shows Sebby-Strempel swatting at the camera. Pendarvis said she hit his client after the recording ended.

The teenager’s mother, Deanna RocQuermore, condemned the attack on her son at a news conference, the television station WCSC reported.

“No child, including mine or anybody else’s, ever, ever deserves that type of abuse or treatment or to be struck not once, not twice but three times by someone that is upset because of the color of someone’s skin,” she said.

Sebby-Strempel was released from jail on $65,000 bail Tuesday, according to the Dorchester County Detention Center. (Jail records identified her by a single last name, Strempel.)

At a bond hearing that day, her legal representative told the judge that there was more than one side to the story, WCSC reported.