Police are investigating a racially-motivated attack on a man making a bicycle delivery on Leary Ave just south of Market St. The suspects are a group of drunk white males who started yelling racial slurs at the man when he rode by them.
When he turned around, a confrontation heated up and a witness tried to deescalate the situation. The group then threw rocks at both the delivery person and the person trying to break things up. One suspect also tried stomping on the man’s bike, but was too drunk to hurt either of the victims or the bike, according to the police report.
The delivery person told police he did not previously know the suspects and that he believes he was targeted due to his race. No arrests appear to have been made, though witnesses recognized the suspects and gave names to the police.
More details from the police report:
Comments
5 responses to “Drunk racists attack man making delivery by bike in Ballard”
I thought we left that racial hatred back in the 60’s, but I guess not. Another sad day for humanity.
unfortunately, idiocy appears to be timeless…
What an absolutely disgusting incident.
The state’s malicious-harassment law makes it a felony to threaten, damage the property of, or physically injure someone because of ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation.
I hope the police and the King County prosecuters fully pursue this, especially since eyewitnesses identified the attackers.
In my many musings on why it is so difficult to simply not drive a car in America, I often harken back to some of my worst experiences bicycling, that is, the times when I have been bullied and threatened by someone driving car. I wonder if such actions could be considered something other than “road rage”, “reckless driving”, or whatever platitude codified into our laws that seems to do so little for the most vulnerable road users.
Often I have thought that those particular moments – where the driver swerves at me and honks or yells something, fails to yield right-of-way while flipping me off, or tailgates me just a foot or two off of my rear wheel – are in fact something much more profound, i.e. a violation of my Civil Rights.
Then I read something like this… a Black Man being called “…little faggot ass nigger…” and then having rocks hurled at his person and his property vandalized in downtown Ballard in 2012 by not one, but several White Men…and I am snapped out of my erroneous conflation.
A good site for some Seattle history…
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm
Slide 17 at this link is especially relevant…
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr2/slides/segregation/segregation_files/frame.htm