A man who said he is the son of the owner and manager of B & L Office Furniture in Kenosha, Wisconsin, spoke to the Daily Caller after his father’s store was burned down by rioters Monday night and said that “we need to come together with a solution.”
Scott Carpenter told the Daily Caller that the store had been in business for over 4o years. He said that he does have insurance on the building, but hasn’t discussed details with his insurance provider.
“Insurance pays out but you still end up taking a loss somewhere along the line, and it’s not like our business was a million-dollar business.,” he said. “We operated locally, we help big companies and we do a lot of business, but we weren’t getting rich.”
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“I think we need to come together with a solution,” Carpenter said when asked about the unrest sweeping the city. “We’ve got a problem – we really need to come together with a solution.”
Unrest began in Kenosha after a video emerged showing an officer shooting a black man, Jacob Blake, 7 times as he entered his vehicle. Officers followed Blake around the front of the car with their guns drawn and began shooting once he opened the driver’s side door.
Blake is now paralyzed from the waist down, according to his father.
Riots erupted Sunday night after the shooting. Rioters burned down buildings, including the furniture store that Carpenter’s father owns, and looters targeted local businesses. A state of emergency was declared Monday night, which implemented a curfew of 8 PM. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE VIDEOS: Kenosha, Wisconsin, Burns As Rioting, Looting Continues Over Police-Involved Shooting)
“I think destroying people’s businesses, their livelihoods, that’s not fixing anything. If anything, I think that’s silencing your voice,” Carpenter told the Daily Caller. “The people who protest, and then the people who do the rioting and looting, you are silencing the protester’s voices. You’re erasing everything that they’re about.”
“You’re gonna get much further with honey than you are with vinegar,” he added.
“In order for anything to change, we ourselves gotta take a good look at ourselves and change us before anything else is going to change,” Carpenter continued. “A little love goes a long way.”