Four black people were charged with hate crimes on Thursday in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that showed a mentally disabled white man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet. The assault went on for hours, until Chicago police found the disoriented victim walking along a street, authorities said.
Recorded on video
The suspects, who were jailed, can be heard on the video using profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.
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Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators initially concluded that the 18-year-old man was singled out because he has “special needs”, not because he was white. But authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects’ use of racial slurs and their references to the victim’s disability. It’s also possible that the suspects were trying to extort something from the victim’s family, police said.
The cruelty of the attack and the intense social media exposure prompted President Barack Obama to respond, calling it “despicable”. “I take these things very seriously,” he told a television on Thursday. But he said the assault does not mean that race relations have gotten worse. — AP