Black man and Filipino man charged in beating, torturing white teenager in Seattle

Apart from the shocking crime of racial torture, which is told in frank terms, it’s an odd story, and the below-minimal competence of the Seattle Times reporter’s writing doesn’t help matters. To help bring some order out of the confusion, here’s my summary of the chronology of the events: the crime took place on May 25, and the police noted physical evidence linking the suspects to the crime the same night and took DNA samples from them at that time, then released them. The victim identified the attackers from photos on June 4. However, the DNA results did not come until September 8, and one of the suspects was not arrested until September 21. The other suspect is still at large.

Three and a half months for a DNA test? Naturally the reporter doesn’t bother to explain why it took so long.

The one heartening thing about the story is that the anti-white nature of the attack is plainly identified.

(Update: but why was a black teamed up with a Filipino? The blogger Hesperado usefully, though in his usual obsessively overstated way, suggests that the attack was not a racial attack on a white, but a Muslim attack on an infidel, his clues being that the black’s name is Mohamed, and that the Filipino comes from a country where there are four and a half million Muslims; and he further argues that I failed to see this obvious possibility because of my “preoccupation with race.” While it’s possible that Islam brought the two together, the problem with Hesperado’s two-pronged theory, about the crime and about me, is that it is the notoriously un-racially preoccupied police, not I, who have officially charged the perpetrators with an anti-white racial motivation, and that the victim himself reported that the perpetrators said to him as they were beating him with his own belt, “How do you like it, white boy?” and “This is for enslaving our people.” It looks as though Hesperado missed that part of the story. Perhaps because of his preoccupation with finding me wrong.)

2 charged with hate crime in assault on teen; 1 arrested

Two men who were questioned and released by Seattle police after a West Seattle teen was beaten in a racially charged attack have been charged in connection with the May 25 assault. One of the men was arrested Tuesday evening.

Two men who were questioned and released by Seattle police after a West Seattle teen was beaten in a racially charged attack have been charged in connection with the May 25 assault. One of the men was arrested Tuesday evening.

DNA recently linked Ahmed Mohamed and Jonathan Baquiring to the attack in which a 16-year-old boy was robbed, taunted with racial insults, burned with a lit cigarette and punched repeatedly. Mohamed, 22, and Baquiring, 21, each were charged Monday with first-degree robbery and malicious harassment, the state’s hate-crime statute.

Baquiring was booked into the King County Jail just after 6 p.m. Tuesday, according to the booking register. His bail is set at $500,000.

Seattle police are still searching for Mohamed.

King County Deputy Prosecutor Samantha Kanner will also seek to have Mohamed held on $500,000 bail once he is arrested, according to charging papers.

The victim, Shane McClellan, said he was walking home around 2 a.m. when two men, whom he described as black and Filipino, asked him for a light.

He said the two men then robbed him and beat him for four hours, whipping him with his own belt while saying things like, “How do you like it, white boy?” and “This is for enslaving our people,” according to the police report.

McClellan, who is white, said the two men also poured Four Loko energy beer on him, burned him with a cigarette and urinated on him, police said.

Police Officer Ryan Blake, who took the report, went to the scene of the beating near Southwest Holden Street and 14th Avenue Southwest, police said. There, he found blood, discarded Four Loko cans and fresh cigarette butts, which he took into evidence.

While returning to the precinct a short time later, Blake saw two men, described as a black man and a Filipino man, who appeared to be trying to conceal an open can, according to police. When he stopped to talk to the two men, he noted they had dried blood on their hands and were drinking the same brand of energy beer and smoking the same brand of cigarettes he’d found earlier.

After Blake talked with his supervisor, it was decided that he should get good contact information on the two but not take them into custody. But before releasing the two men, Blake used cotton swabs to capture DNA from the blood on their hands, charging paperwork said.

On June 4, police showed McClellan photo montages with the hope of identifying his attackers. McClellan pointed out photos of Mohamed and Baquiring. Baquiring is Asian American and Mohamed is black, according to charging papers.

On Sept. 8, Seattle police received a report from the State Patrol crime lab that confirmed that swabs taken from both men’s hands matched McClellan’s DNA, charging papers said.

Tim McClellan, the victim’s father, said he’s relieved the men have been charged, but he’s angry with the way police handled the incident. “They had them, they let them go … This is proof that they dropped the ball,” he said.

Seattle police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said Tuesday that investigators took the case seriously from the start and had every intention of making an arrest.

“We had a case detective who worked this case very thoroughly and very methodically,” Whitcomb said.

Detectives “took the time to build a case that would withstand the test of our justice system,” he said.

“You simply can’t arrest people without sufficient evidence,” he said.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 22, 2010 06:17 PM | Send