An unsettling racist assault caught on cellphone footage has triggered widespread calls for hate crime charges, after several white teens were seen chasing and attacking a Black teenager while calling him racial slurs.
The assault happened at a Regal Cinemas movie theater at 11 p.m. on Aug. 1 in Simi Valley, California. Authorities identified the victims as an 18-year-old Black teenager and an 18-year-old white teenager.
The now-viral footage of the attack shows several assailants converge on the Black victim, Michael Robinson, before punching and kicking him, then chasing him around a parking lot. At one point, Robinson is seen trying to fend off the attackers with a chair while the group is heard shouting racial slurs at him.
Robinson told local news affiliates that the group initially targeted his friend and punched him. Then, they turned on Robinson, chased him, yelled racial profanities, and slammed him on the hood of a car.
“They end up pushing my head into a trash can, and they start hitting me in the back of my head, like this whole time I wasn’t getting hit anywhere else but the back in my head,” Robinson told KTTV. “Honestly, I thought I was going to die. Because I know what happens when you get hit on the back of your head. You could have internal bleeding. You could have brain damage.”
Robinson said he suffered a concussion, bruises, cuts, and a chipped tooth from the attack. He did not know the group that attacked him, but said his friend had prior issues with them.
Four of the teen assailants were arrested and cited with battery charges, then released. One of the charged individuals is the son of a Simi Valley police officer. The police department said the officer will not be involved in the investigation of the incident.
After footage of the attack went viral, local residents packed a city council meeting and demanded authorities tack on hate crime charges for the attack.
“He was chased down, jumped and mocked for the color of his skin,” Jared Jasson, a friend of Robinson’s, said at the meeting, per the Ventura County Star. “This wasn’t a fight. It was a hate-driven attack, and it happened right here in our city. … When we ignore or excuse this kind of behavior, we’re sending a message that racism is allowed to exist in our community.”
“To the figures with actual authority, get these aggressors off the streets as they’ve proven to be nothing but unremorseful,” another Simi Valley resident said.
Robinson’s lawyer, Jamal Tooson, echoed the community’s sentiments, arguing that his client was targeted explicitly because of his race.
“He was the only African-American, and that’s why this is a targeted hate crime. As they were attacking him, they were yelling racial slurs. It is crystal clear what transpired,” Tooson told CBS News.
Simi Valley Police Chief Steve Shorts said the attack was “definitely a hate incident,” but that filing hate crime charges would be up to the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office.
“Hate crimes cannot be swept under the rug,” Avery Estelle, president of Simi Valley High School’s Black Student Union, said. “In blatant reality, if the circumstances of these events were switched, if one White child were running for his life from a mob of Black men and had been chased, beat and spewed racial slurs at, and that had been recorded, this town would be on fire.”
The instance Estelle described resembles the fallout from a recent brawl in Cincinnati, Ohio, that made national headlines and sparked calls for hate crime charges after conservative and right-wing media accounts maintained that a “Black mob” viciously attacked a white man and woman.
In that case, three Black people were jailed on felonious assault charges and given massive bail amounts to pay for their pre-trial release. Some clips of the fight have since surfaced showing that one of the victims yelled anti-Black racial slurs before the melee broke out.
In the Simi Valley case, the teens who were arrested were cited for battery, but were released back to the custody of their parents, and police are withholding their names for the time being. These decisions are also drawing scrutiny and backlash from the community.
Simi Valley police say their investigation into the incident is ongoing.
There’s no word from the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office on whether the teens will be indicted on hate crime charges.
Robinson said that while he forgives his attackers, “there are consequences to your actions.”
“Honestly, I don’t hate those kids. I don’t feel any animosity towards them. I pity them, honestly, because what they just did was — it was sick, it was evil. And it was not right,” he said.
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