Photo Courtesy Of Bishop Whitehead
A clergyman is back in the news. Brooklyn pastor Bishop Lamor Whitehead allegedly grabbed a woman–identified as Tarsha Howard–by the neck while she confronted him during his latest live-streamed sermon, and both parties were arrested.
According to The Daily News, Whitehead and Howard were arrested on Sept. 18 after the woman allegedly confronted Whitehead during his morning sermon. He was reportedly preaching at Leaders Of Tomorrow International Ministry in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The same church where he was allegedly robbed at gunpoint in July.
“They [locked] me up in front of my children, my wife, [and] in front of my church,” Whitehead said about officers who responded to the recent incident. The officers reportedly took him to the 69th Precinct, where they charged him with assault. “They publicly embarrassed me, and then they [dropped] all the charges after two hours and [apologized] to me.”
He added that he was thrown in a cell with “felony charges” before he was released.
“They dropped all the charges and let me out,” he said. “You don’t get to arrest me and throw me in prison. They had me in a cell with someone with felony charges and let me out. It’s not going to stop here. If I was a rabbi, if I was a Catholic priest, they would have never done this.”
On the other hand, Howard was reportedly charged with trespassing and disrupting a religious service.
Whitehead alleged that as he was closing out his latest sermon, two women, including the 47-year-old woman, entered Leaders Of Tomorrow and sat in the back.
“I was almost done with my preaching, and these two young ladies came in and sat in the back,” he recalled.
In the video, he’s reportedly heard telling one of them if they want to “come preach.”
“You want to come preach? Come on up here. I’m gonna make you famous,” he allegedly said to the woman, who was off-camera, during a live stream of the services.
One of the women began screaming, prompting Whitehead to walk into the crowd and tell someone to “move her out of here.” As soon as he began walking back to the pulpit, he continued, he saw one of the women approach him.
“She came in the middle aisle and just [started] cussing me out, calling me all types of names, calling me all types of things,” he said. “She came back storming toward my wife and my 10-month-old baby. She went toward my wife, and that’s when I grabbed her [by the neck]. I grabbed her [by the neck] and took her out of my church. All I could remember was the guys with the guns who put their gun in my baby’s face.”
That’s when, in the video, Whitehead is seen allegedly grabbing Howard by the back of the neck and pushing her off camera before yelling, “Grab her! Grab her!” Shortly after the commotion, he was arrested.
The Brooklyn pastor claimed he recognized the two women, saying they were bloggers.
“They were some wannabe up-and-coming bloggers,” he said. “They came to my church to disrupt my service.”