‘Slave for sale.’ Craigslist ad of black student gets teen arrested, Illinois cops say

An Illinois high school student is accused of posting an online ad of his black classmate with the caption “Slave for sale.”

Now he’s charged with felony hate crimes.

The 14-year-old boy snapped the picture of another freshman student, who is African American, while sitting at a lunch table in Naperville Central High School, the Chicago Tribune reported. Naperville is a suburb of Chicago.

Then the boy uploaded the picture to Craigslist with the caption and a racial slur, according to a DuPage County State’s Attorney news release.

The racist ad began to spread through the school, WLS reported.

“I witnessed it on Snapchat at first,” Tejia Gilford told the Chicago TV station. “A lot of people were sharing it, saying it was wrong.”

The school district began an investigation and said Monday that it “took swift and appropriate action steps to address this situation and the students involved,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. By Tuesday, the teen was charged as a juvenile with two felony hate crimes and misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

“The allegations against the juvenile in this case are beyond disturbing,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin wrote in the news release. “Hate crimes have no place in our society and will not be tolerated in DuPage County. Anyone, regardless of age, accused of such disgraceful actions will be charged accordingly.”

Naperville is the same city where a group of diners at Buffalo Wild Wings were asked to move tables because another patron was “racist” and didn’t want them sitting there, McClatchy news group reported. The employees involved in the incident were fired.

Buffalo Wild Wings fires workers who moved black customers after racist complaint