“I can’t live like this.” Virginia Beach family frustrated by racial slur, animal noises playing next door

BY SIERRA JENKINS The Virginian-Pilot Sep 28, 2021

VIRGINIA BEACH — When Karen Quick went to decorate the mailbox of her daughter’s friend last week for her 12th birthday, she knew to expect the banjo music and flashing lights blinking from the house next door.

Her husband told her the night before that he thought he heard “racist stuff” coming from a speaker inside the neighboring house when he went to pick up their daughter from Jannique and John Martinez’s home. She brushed him off because she thought he’d been mistaken.

But the banjo music seemed to be playing louder, and then Quick said she heard a slur come from the speaker next door.

Jannique Martinez and her family, who are Black, have lived in the cul-de-sac on Jessamine Court for five years. She said she’s had to deal with loud music and taunting behavior for the majority of the time she’s lived in the Salem Lakes neighborhood.

Multiple calls to Virginia Beach police have resulted in the neighbor turning the music down, sometimes before officers arrive, Martinez said.

The “constant” music coming from next door became “white noise” for the Martinez family and their neighbors Andy and Nancy Eleftheratos. But since July, sounds of a monkey screeching came from a room on the house’s far left side.

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