Five children taken from a Black family after a traffic stop in Coffee County will remain in the custody of the Department of Children’s Services following a hearing in juvenile court on Monday.
Bianca Clayborne and Deonte Williams were pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for tinted car windows and driving in the left lane on I-24 without passing as they tried to make their way from their home in Georgia to a family funeral in Chicago last month.
After a search of the family’s car turned up five grams of marijuana—a misdemeanor in Tennessee—Williams was arrested. Clayborne was cited and released with the couple’s five children. “The mother had custody of the children when we were done,” a THP colonel told Channel 2 News.
Less than six hours later, DCS forcibly took the children from Clayborne as she waited to bond Williams out.
“This family has been without their babies for 30 days,” Courtney Teasley, the family’s attorney said in a news conference outside the Coffee County Justice Center following the juvenile court hearing, which was closed to the public. The youngest child, Teasley noted, is a breast-feeding infant.
Clayborne will also be required to submit to a
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