Last Wednesday, after an editor at the American called Molitor and Simon to give them a chance to deny the allegations, leaving his cell phone number with both – but before the story had appeared in print – Richards called the editor on his cell phone to say that a number of people had been calling her to accuse her of “making a racial issue” out of the incident with the Academy recuits. (In fact, last week’s 1A story made no mention of the race of anyone involved in the incident. For the record, Richards and her firefighter husband and fire recruit son all are white.)
Though Molitor denied it, the EYE suspects that Molitor started a phone tree by supporters of Local 73 in an attempt to harass Richards and pressure her into retracting her story – and saw to it that the editor’s cell phone number passed into Richards hands. Richards, courageously, stood by her story, although she regretted that she and her family had been thrust into the limelight and, above all, prayed for fair treatment of her son.