A Tennessee firefighter has been placed on administrative leave after a racially and ethnically charged social media post.
The now-deleted Facebook post by Murfreesboro firefighter Joe Pennington had appeared on his Facebook page Tuesday night, WZTV-TV reports. It concerned both the attack at three Atlanta spas that left eight Asian women dead, as well as the Boulder, CO, grocery store shooting that killed 10 people, including a police officer.
“We lowered the flags for a few Asian prostitutes who was shot by a white man,” Pennington wrote.
"If a white American kills anyone of another color it’s racist but the (expletive) Muslim who killed a police officer and 9 others 'we must ban guns,'" he added.
WZTV alerted Murfreesboro Fire and Rescue officials to the post, which was deleted less than an hour after the department responded to the news outlet. A later post by Pennington stated that his Facebook page had been hacked.
But WZTV said the firefighter had posted at least one other racially sensitive post previously.
