Commentary

4 Charged With Hate Crimes For Live Streamed Torture

Four people are being charged with hate crimes in addition to a number of other offenses after they tortured a mentally disabled man while live streaming the incident on Facebook.

The video, which was removed from Facebook but is still viewable on other sites, has been watched millions of times and quickly became a social and political flashpoint, encapsulating America’s fraught race relations.

According to the state’s attorney for Cook County, Illinois, Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, and Brittany Covington, all 18 years old, and Tanishia Covington, 24 years old, are being charged with felonies, including aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, residential burglary and hate crime following the incident.

(A previous blog post mistakenly stated that all the individuals were 18 years old.)

Hill is also being charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle in connection with the theft of a van.

The four were arrested on Wednesday after they live streamed themselves tying up and physically and verbally abusing an 18-year-old man, whom most news outlets are choosing not to identify by name. The assault included kicking, punching, cutting with a knife, and making him drink out of a toilet. The attackers, who are African-American, also utter obscenities including “Fuck white people.”

After being held for around five hours on Tuesday, the victim escaped when a neighbor called the police, and was later found by police wandering the neighborhood on Chicago’s west side, disoriented, bleeding and partly undressed, despite the frigid temperature. His parents had reported him missing from his home in a Chicago suburb on Sunday, two days after he met Hill, an acquaintance from high school, for a sleepover.

President Obama, who began his political career in Chicago, condemned the incident as “despicable” and a “hate crime” in an interview with a reporter from a local Chicago area CBS station. However, he also emphasized he did not think racial tensions were worsening, but simply becoming more visible, due to technology like mobile phones and Facebook.
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