Sheron K. Brown had always felt at home on Lake Shirley in Central Massachusetts.
He has been competing as a tournament fisherman for over 15 years there, and from March to October, he visits at least three days a week, often with his 10-year-old daughter, Azaylia.
“I’m a fixture there,” Brown said. “Home away from home.”
But on Memorial Day, Brown said he and his daughter were subjected to a racist attack at thelake, as a property owner allegedly threw rocks at their boat while calling them a racial slur. Brown and his daughter are Black.
“Never in 1,000 years did I think that something like this could happen,” Brown said in an interview this week. “I fish for therapy. It’s peaceful to me. It’s my Zen.”
Brown recorded a video of the encounter and posted it to his Facebook account. As of Friday night, the post had 365,000 views.
In the video, a shirtless man in a baseball cap can be seen yelling from shore.
“Oh yeah, I’m throwing rocks at you [expletive],” the man said in the video, using a racial slur.
After the video ended, Brown said the man grabbed a piece of driftwood and continued to be “belligerent.”
From his boat, Brown told the man he was going to call the police. Brown later met officers at a nearby boat ramp, and after viewing the video, they spoke to the man, identified in a police report as David McPartlan, 66, of Ayer.
McPartlan told police that Brown “was fishing too close to his dock/swimming area and [he] asked him to move,” the report stated.
“I slipped a word out that maybe I shouldn’t have but I was pissed,” McPartlan told police. Asked about the racial slur, he said, “I’m not going to admit to it,” according to the report.
McPartlan told police he threw rocks “around” the boat but not directly at it. But the report stated that he “threw rocks at the victims, to assault and intimidate, because of their race.”
McPartlan is being charged with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault to intimidate. He is set to be arraigned in Fitchburg District Court on June 16.
McPartlan did not respond to a request for comment.
For Brown, 53, the day started as a typical fishing trip. Brown, who grew up in Worcester and later moved to Shirley, woke up early to avoid the holiday crowds and headed to New Hampshire to fish.
He arrived home in Leominster around 1 p.m. and Azaylia told him she wanted her turn.
Brown, an IT systems administrator at a pharmaceutical company in Connecticut, ordered a large pepperoni pizza, well done, with light sauce, just how he and his daughter like it.
They picked it up from Athens Pizza and headed first to Lake Whalom in Lunenburg. But it was “too busy,” Brown said, so they headed to Lake Shirley.
Brown took Azaylia to “the ideal place” on the lake in his 20-foot bass boat embellished with his brand name, SKB Fishing. Brown is a freshwater guide and takes children and adults out on the lake for a fee.
They stopped about 65 feet from shore and waited for three other boats fishing closer to the shore to clear out.
He wanted Azaylia to catch bluegill, a fish that starts to nest in shallow areas between docks when the water reaches the upper 60s.
They started a competition — who can catch more fish?
Less than two minutes into their game, Brown saw a person coming down to the water. He assumed it was the owner of the nearby dock, to make chitchat or ask about what’s biting.
“They’re always friendly,” Brown said. “If you ask me a question about fishing, I can talk to you all day.”
As Brown started to tie Azaylia’s line, the owner started to yell at them.
“It’s his dock. It’s his property,” Brown recalled. “I should go somewhere else. And I feel he’s trying to bully me to leave, right?”
As Azaylia ate her pizza and put her feet in the water, Brown told the man, later identified as McPartlan, that he was out on the lake with his daughter for Memorial Day.
Brown said the closest his boat came to shore was about 50 feet, about two boat lengths away.
But Brown said that McPartlan continued to curse at them.
Azaylia looked at her father and asked, “Did I do something wrong?” Brown recalled.
“No, honey, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Brown told her. “This man is just being mean.”
Azaylia kept trying to catch a bluegill, and Brown took out his phone to capture the instant a flapping fin emerged from the water. For a moment, the excitement of fishing was all that mattered.
Then Brown saw a “big splash” as a rock hit the water.
“I was scared for what else could happen,” Brown said.
Brown yelled to McPartlan, “Did you throw a rock at me?” He then began to record the exchange with McPartlan saying yes.
Azaylia had never heard the slur before, Brown said.
“I’m feeling upset that he doesn’t care that my daughter’s there and he’s used expletives,” Brown said. “And I’m feeling upset that now I have to figure out how to explain somebody’s racist remarks to my daughter.”
Azaylia typically smiles and “waves at everybody” on the water, Brown said. But on Memorial Day, she fell silent.
“This child is looking at me, you know, like, what do we do?” Brown said.
The 354-acre lake, located in both Shirley and Lunenburg, is maintained by the Lake Shirley Improvement Corporation.
Joanna Bilotta, the corporation’s president, and Andrew Storm, its vice president, said in an interview Thursday that the corporation had no comment on the incident.
But as a resident on the lake, Bilotta said she has seen Brown fishing before and “found him very pleasant.”
Storm said he was “shocked and saddened” by the allegations.
“I’ve been on the lake my entire life, so over 40 years,” Storm said. “I have never had a negative experience with any of the fishermen on the lake.”
The lake is public and is governed by the state, Storm said.
Brown said he plans to attend the arraignment.
“I’ve never encountered that before from anyone on the lake,” Brown said. “It’s been all peace, all love.”
A week later, Azaylia is still processing the encounter, Brown said.
She says she feels OK, but she’s been quiet, he said.
“Hopefully, she’s not scarred by this,” he said. “But I don’t know.”
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