The man accused of murdering truck driver Christine Summers in Alabama on August 19, 2020 allegedly told the officers who arrested him that Trump made him do it.
Summers was murdered in the early morning hours of August 19.
She had been on the phone with her husband when she pulled over near mile marker 118 on I-59/20 in the Birmingham area because she thought she might have hit a man in the roadway.
Summers hung up the phone and dialed 911, then got out of her truck.
It was then that Charles Levester Gipson, 39, reportedly attacked her while she was still on the phone with the 911 operator.
“The investigation showed that Summers had called 911, telling a dispatcher she had seen a Black male walking on the interstate and thought she may have hit him. While still on the phone with the dispatcher, Summers got out of the truck to investigate. The dispatcher then heard her began to scream, ‘Get away from me,'” Al.com reported.
At approximately 3:20 am, Summers’ body was discovered by a fellow truck driver, Ozell Johnson, who stopped after seeing her lying on the ground near her truck. He called 911 after seeing her bloody and unresponsive, but Summers was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Alabama State Bureau of Investigation took charge of the investigation.
According to local news outlet AL.com, Gipson was taken into custody within an hour of the murder by the Hueytown Police Department after they received a call about a man standing naked in the street.
Hueytown Police knew that Gipson was wanted in connection with a homicide and took him to jail to await questioning by state authorities.
While at the jail, Gipson also attacked two police officers, who suffered minor injuries. He has been issued two charges of aggravated assault against a police officer in addition to the murder charge.
Gipson has been housed at the Jefferson County Jail since August 22. He is being held on a $1.575 million bond.
A preliminary hearing for Gibson was held this week in Jefferson County; Gibson was not in the courtroom during the hearing. Presiding Judge David Carpenter told the court that Gibson, who had previously attacked two police officers and assaulted a jailer was too “unstable and dangerous” to himself and others to appear in court.
Arresting Officer Justin Hickey said Gipson “seemed to be very disgruntled with our race…, he felt we were there to hurt him.” Hickey said Gipson called them “white mfers” and “said he wanted to kill us.”