An active duty combat veteran is dead, a victim of black mob violence in Seattle, October 2013.
The soldier had been celebrating his return from combat and imminent entry to civilian life. He and his buddies were walking to his hotel early Saturday morning near a Seattle area military base when a car full of black people did a drive-by racial shout out: “Crackers,” they screamed. KOMO TV news picks up the antiseptic version:782
A group of men in a car drove by and someone inside shouted a racial comment toward the white soldiers, the Lakewood Police Department said.
"One of the soldiers yelled back something about the suspects treating combat soldiers with disrespect," Lt. Chris Lawler said.
The vehicle turned around, and five black males got out of the car and confronted the soldiers, according to reports. As the verbal confrontation ensued, the driver of the vehicle realized the men were actually combat veterans and called his friends off.
While the men headed back to their vehicle, one of the suspects appeared to have bumped into the victim, witnesses say.
The soldiers saw their friend fall to the ground as the car sped away. The victim was bleeding profusely from a stab wound and died at the scene.
Clint Zimmerman was with the soldier when he died. “I don’t understand how anyone could do this,” Zimmerman told KOMO. “He gave his life for people to enjoy the freedoms they have and he was stabbed for no fuckkin’ reason. What was it all over: Just because they were some white boys?”783
The murder is less of a mystery for people from the area. That part of town is black. And “off limits” for white people day and night, say many local commenters to Tacoma news sites.
One woman, who calls herself Nanamamabjm, describes a recent violent crime against her family nearby:
We had an attempted break last weekend DESPITE a very large and another moderate sized dog and my mom being home.
Black dudes in hoodies I dare to say. . . but that is the reality of things. They were black, they were wearing gray hoodies.
When my husband retires, we're outta here.
Many of the readers of the KOMO web site, as well as readers of the Seattle Times, were surprised the newspaper would break with their tradition and report the race of the suspects. Even so, some wondered why the Times would refer to the crime, as “racially tinged confrontation” instead of a potential hate crime.
King 5, another Seattle TV news outlet, did not include a description of the alleged assailants. Nor did it include a quote from what the alleged killers allegedly said.
This was the second “racially tinged” stabbing death in the Seattle area in less than a month. In September 2013, a black man stabbed a college professor in the neck and torso as he tried to defend his girlfriend. Local press called it unprovoked and random.784
Residents of the Seattle and Tacoma area pride themselves on racial harmony. But black mob violence and black on white crime is an increasingly common part of life is this part of the state.
Ken McMahon is just one of many Seattle residents who remember the June 1 shooting death of Molly Conley: “She was a 15-year old walking home from her birthday party with friends near Lake Stevens,” said McMahon. “She was attending a Catholic high school in Seattle. When I first read about it, noting where it was, I thought my god, now whites on meth are doing drive-bys. It turned out to be a black man who allegedly shot her for 'no reason! Except the usual one, walking while white. And in a semi-rural area!”
In 2010, a video of a group of black people pummeling a visibly pregnant white woman on a Seattle bus went viral.785
For all the visible violence in the Seattle area, local public officials are adamant their part of the country is safer. Just look at the statistics, they plead.
That didn’t make sense to Nihan Thai. This Seattle resident was robbed and assaulted in 2012. He soon figured out, so was everyone else in his neighborhood. Many of the victims were Asian. All of the suspects are black.
Thai talked to KING5, a local TV news station about the crime. 786
"I was literally ten steps away from the house. And I felt a hit on my right face and another hit on the back of my neck and on my lower back, and so as I was falling forward I felt hands grabbing my jacket and my bag," said Thai.
Two months later, not far from where Thai was attacked, another man was grabbed from behind, robbed and beaten. His name was Danny Vega, and he died.
Thai, like Vega, is Asian and openly gay. Before he died, Vega told police “he'd been attacked by three African-American males, all around 18 years of age,” said The Intelligencer. The tenth such attack in that area in two months, all near the corner of Martin Luther King Way and Othello Street.
Police released a video of three black men who are “persons of interest.” Back to KING5:
“Thai started visiting his neighbors, they had a lot to say, and soon he realized he was doing his own crime survey. Thai knocked on 49 doors. 32 people were home. How many of them had been victims of a crime since moving to the neighborhood? All but three.
Many victims told Thai they'd never reported the crimes to police.
"It happens to them so often that after 2 or 3 times they stopped reporting because they didn't see any progress," said Thai.
Oh yeah, that happens here a lot - on steroids.
The three men in the video have been identified as “persons of interest” because they were seen disposing of Vega’s coat. One of them used Vega’s cell phone to call the welfare department to update his address.
But they have not been arrested.
Leo Knight is a former police officer and security expert. He covers crime on both sides of the border.
"Black on white racial violence is becoming more and more prevalent,” said Knight. “But no one in the mainstream media wants to talk about it. Yet, as we saw in the Trayvon Martin case, the mainstream media couldn't stop talking about that. The hypocrisy is palpable."
Told ya: Not everyone up there is goofy.