A city councilman in Decatur, Alabama is finding out that racially charged Facebook posts can and do come back to haunt you.

Hunter Pepper, who’s just 19, was elected to the council in 2020, television station WAFF reports. He posted the comment on the social media platform when he was 16. On Saturday he held a press conference and apologized for his remarks, telling reporters he was “extremely sorry” for implying in the post that Black protesters at the Galleria Mall in Hoover, Alabama, should be run over.

The protest in question occurred after EJ Bradford lost his life on November 22, 2018, by a Hoover police officer. Police believed at the time that Bradford shot a teen and 12-year-old girl inside the mall on Thanksgiving night.

Hunter’s 2018 post resurfaced recently and in the post, he wrote “See I have to go shopping there next week and we gone play a game called ‘red rover red rover you fools gone get ran over!”

Someone commented underneath the post “Use the bumper, that’s what it’s there for!”

“I got brushguard it does better,” Pepper responded.

Pepper noted he was 16 when he made the comment and then said “My past has come back to bite me in the butt.”

During his press conference, he said his comment was “extremely arrogant,” and “very ignorant.”

“I don’t think I should have made that comment,” Pepper said.

At least one of his colleagues on the city council also doesn’t feel he should have made “that comment,” either and thinks he should resign.

“It’s something that shouldn’t be accepted,” former Councilman Bill Jackson told reporters for the Decatur Daily.

“If I made a comment like that, people would come out of the woodwork after me. I expect people will come out of the woodwork for his resignation. If he doesn’t do it voluntarily, I expect people will request it,” Jackson said.

So far, Pepper has dug in his heels and he’s making excuses for his inexcusable behavior.

“There is nothing in that post that mentions race whatsoever,” he said during his presser. “Unfortunately it took a turn in that direction to involve race. I am extremely disappointed in myself at that moment in time. I’m not a racist individual, and don’t like racism and am extremely sorry how that turned out.”

Well, since the majority of the protesters at the mall were Black, how did he think this was going to sound? I mean, that’s kind of bone-headed. Naturally, people were offended.

Pepper noted he made some bad choices in the past.

“My past is something that I tried to look back on and say I could have done a lot better,” he said. “I could have made a lot better decisions.”

I think we can all say that, but let’s hope Pepper leaves racism out of his good or bad decisions.