Joseph Joines is a Black truck driver. While helping clean up after Tropical Storm Helene, he suffered an incident that changed his life forever. He was delivering a semi truck load to the Two Banks Development Landfill in Haywood County, North Carolina. Joines claims, “I was attacked and my truck was flipped over by bulldozers.” He was threatened at gunpoint and told not to leave. He didn’t think calling 911 was an option, because one of the white men participating in the confrontation was a sheriff’s deputy.

Landfill employee Andrew Ferguson reportedly confronted Joines because his cellphone was missing and he wanted to search Joines’ truck. Joines had no choice but to let him. “Andrew had a gun in his hand.”

Ferguson left empty-handed. Even after he found his cellphone elsewhere at the facility, he and more men returned to confront Joines again. When Joines tried to leave, they allegedly used bulldozers to flip his trailer so he couldn’t drive away. When he ran to another waiting truck, they allegedly took that trucker’s keys away and chased Joines back to his own vehicle.

“Another man told me to stay in the truck so that nothing bad would happen.”

Joines admits, “I thought they were going to kill me.” In desperation, he began to film the confrontation with the employees and deputy. In a video watched over 10 million times on TikTok, he repeatedly pleads, “Anybody, I’m in Clyde, North Carolina, and they tried to kill me.” You can see that video, embedded below:

Two sides to every story

TBD landfill released a statement, refuting Joines’ story.

“TBD Landfill disputes any claim that Joseph Joines was a victim of any misconduct or prejudice on the landfill property. In fact, Joines engaged in aggressive and threatening behavior and broke the facility’s rules, as well as state and federal law.”

— TBD Landfill

The company claims a landfill employee’s “outgoing calls for help, and ultimately to 911” during the confrontation prove someone on site was trying to resolve the situation safely. For all we know, those calls were made by Ferguson himself, who told Joines he was, “going to jail.” According to this story, employees were using force, but just to keep Joines in his truck cab until more police arrived.

Finally, Attorney Moseley Matheson is representing Joines, and has announced they plan to file a federal lawsuit. He had a message for the town.

“I want to make clear that we are not alleging that the citizens of Haywood County or the town of Clyde, North Carolina, have any involvement in this incident. Our clients were involved in cleanup effort for Hurricane Helene. The citizens of Haywood County have suffered greatly as a result of that storm and the town of Clyde and its residents have played no role in this incident, and we expect they will be treated accordingly and not harassed or threatened.”

— Attorney Moseley Matheson