By Mason Clarke
Following a harrowing incident that could have turned out far worse, police and a Hawkeye football player said they are thankful for communication.
On the afternoon of June 20, Faith Ekakitie, defensive lineman for the Iowa football team, found himself suddenly surrounded by police, guns pointed.
Just minutes earlier, First American Bank, 640 Highway 1, had been robbed. Witnesses who called police said the robber was a large black male wearing black shorts and a black top and sporting a side pistol.
Police told the DI that six minutes after arriving at the bank, they fanned out in the general vicinity after finding the robber had left the bank premises. Ekakitie was two to three blocks from First American Bank. He had his headphones in, jamming to some music, but music was far from his biggest distraction.
Ekakitie said the issue was a game.
Since its creation, the virtual interaction game Pokémon Go has reportedly been linked to distracted driving, pedestrian-caused car crashes, and abductions. Ekakitie was distracted by the game and the sound from his headphones; he didn’t notice police calling to him.
“[I] had actually just pulled up to the park because [I] was playing a newly popular game called Pokémon Go,” Ekakitie wrote in a Facebook post recounting the events.
Ekakitie fit the description police received about the robbery. He, too, was a large black male wearing black shorts and a black top. And when police first shouted at him, he could not hear them and therefore did not heed them.
“Contact was made with the gentleman six minutes after officers arrived at the bank,” Iowa City police Sgt. Scott Gaarde said.
From the police perspective, the issue had nothing at all to do with Ekakitie. Their focus was on finding a robber armed with a gun. They thought they had found the right guy when they spotted Ekakitie in the park, who largely fit witnesses’ descriptions.
“My pockets were checked, my backpack was opened and searched carefully,” Ekakitie wrote in the post. “And I was asked to lift up my shirt while they searched my waistband.”
In his post, which has gone viral, Ekakitie concluded his opening paragraph with, “This is what happened from my point of view.”
By the end of the incident, Ekakitie thanked police.
“I would like to thank the Iowa City Police Department for handling a sensitive situation very professionally,” he wrote.
Gaarde said once the officers realized the identity was not that of the robbery suspect, “they explained to him what was going on and why he was approached … [Then] he was completely released from the situation.”
Neither Gaarde nor Ekakitie, according to his post, believe the officers that afternoon performed unjust actions. On the contrary, Ekakitie wrote, he wanted to urge the general population to take away from the events that he in fact was saved by the professionalism of the officers.
“I would urge us all to at least attempt to unlearn some of the prejudices that we have learned about each other and now plague our minds and our society,” he wrote. “I would also urge people to be more aware of their surroundings because clearly I wasn’t.”