The crime is at least the third such racially motivated beating since April 7, the first two occurring in Gainesville, Fla.
Trayvon Martin is the 17-year-old killed by George Zimmerman on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman has said he shot Martin in self-defense after Martin attacked him. Martin’s family and a group capitalizing on the incident's apparent racial undertones claim Zimmerman shot Martin because he was black.
The evidence released thus far, including a photograph that shows the back of Zimmerman’s head bleeding, supports Zimmerman's claim. Prosecutors have charged him with second-degree murder. He was released from custody on Monday on a $150,000 bond.
‘Empty Your Pockets, White Boy’
The Sun-Times reported of the recent Chicago crime that when Hayes and his 15-year-old companion set upon their victim, they attacked from behind.
They “walked up behind the 19-year-old victim and pinned his arms to his side early Tuesday, police said," according to the newspaper. It added, "Hayes then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, 'Empty your pockets, white boy.'"
The duo “rifled through his pockets, threw him to the ground and punched him in the head and back ‘numerous times,’ police said,” the paper continued, adding that Hayes readily confessed to revenge and racial malice:
After he was arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the racially charged Trayvon Martin case in Florida and beat the man because he was white, Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said, citing court records.
Police charged Hayes with three felonies, the Sun-Times reported: attempted robbery, aggravated assault, and a hate crime.
"Travyon" Shouted in Gainesville Beatings
In Gainesville, Fla, according to the Gainesville Sun, authorities reported two such crimes.
The first involves the beating of a 27-year-old man by a mob of five to eight blacks on April 7, the paper reported.
The victim, police told the Sun, was walking home from a bar when a “group of men got out and told him he was walking too slowly." "They then yelled 'Trayvon,' according to a [Gainesville Police Department] report, and proceeded to beat him."
Police told the newspaper the beating lasted a full five minutes and may very possibly have permanently damaged the victim:
During what he [the victim] told police was a five-minute beating, he sustained injuries to the left eye, abrasions to his palms and a cut on his right kneecap, and [the police spokesman] said he would likely have “permanent disfigurement to the left side of his face.”
“The assailants were black, while the victim is white,” the Sun reported, quoting the police. The police spokesman continued, “We do believe that the crime was racially motivated,” the paper reported.
The Florida Civil Rights Association condemned the crime, said the Sun, quoting J. Willie David III, the group’s president. “Such attacks are no different than the [lynchings] of blacks in the Jim Crow South and Civil Rights era,” he said, adding:
Senseless and evil attacks like the one in Gainesville and Midway invite further acts of violence by those who are using race to divide and inflame this situation. The Florida Civil Rights Association will not ignore these alleged hate crimes because the victims are white, and not black.
The case in Midway involved two black men who beat a man with hammer. News reports do not say the victim is white.
While the first beating in Gainesville was beginning to get legs on the Internet, another beating occurred — even more severe: A mob attacked a white man who was grappling with a robbery suspect who had snatched a woman’s purse, the Sun reported. According to the paper:
The name of Trayvon Martin was invoked again Wednesday night [April 11] in Gainesville during an attack by a group that police say stomped on a white man who was scuffling with a black robbery suspect.
The robbery suspect, Carl Milton Babb, 50, had been released from prison earlier in the day after serving more than two years in prison for the same crime he is accused of committing Wednesday — snatching a purse from a woman near the downtown plaza.
Babb approached a woman to ask for a light for his cigarette, the newspaper reported. The woman didn’t have one, whereupon Babb grabbed her purse, which contained an expensive cell phone, and took off.
According to the Sun, the woman’s “dinner companion” and “another person” chased Babb and took him down.
That’s when the mob attacked, the newspaper reported:
The scene attracted a crowd, and a number of people on the plaza approached Babb and the Good Samaritan, who tried to explain that Babb had just stolen his friend's purse.
[S]ome members of the crowd shouted “Trayvon!” and that at least three of members of the crowd began stomping on the hands of the woman's friend to force him to let go of Babb…
[S]ome witnesses to the robbery tried to calm down the crowd, affirming the victim's story that he was trying to stop a man accused of a crime and retrieve his friend’s purse.
The police spokesman told the newspaper that “[t]he crowd was acting off of emotion without knowing all of the facts of this case.”
Police don’t know the identities of the attackers and the newspaper did not speculate about the race of those who attacked the person who brought down the convict Babb.
Zimmerman Released to Threats
The question is how much racial tension will mount as the case against George Zimmerman proceeds. From the beginning, race hustlers and demagogues have exploited the case to ratchet up racial hatred, the most notorious being Al Sharpton, he of the Tawana Brawley hoax.
Exacting vengeance from someone has been the battle cry.
The minute Zimmerman walked out of jail on Monday, the death threats on Twitter began.
Before that, the New Black Panthers had put out a $10,000 bounty for George Zimmerman’s “capture,” openingly hinting they would kill him. The group also published a poster that said Zimmerman was “wanted dead or alive.”
About the same time, movie director Spike Lee tweeted an address he thought was George Zimmerman’s to 250,000 Twitter followers, apparently hoping that someone would show up to get “justice for Trayvon.” Problem was, the address was for a different Zimmerman, and the elderly couple who lived at the residence were forced to flee for their lives. Lee “settled” with the couple after an apology.
Dershowitz: Prosecutor’s Affidavit "Unethical," "Immoral," "Irresponsible" and "Stupid"
Lost in all the racial furor is the simple truth that no evidence suggests that Zimmerman is telling anything but the truth. Even leftist lawyer Alan Dershowitz has twice attacked the Florida prosecutor’s office for the thin statement of “facts” in the affidavit it released in announcing second-degree murder charges against Zimmerman. He declared that the evidence it contained is “so thin that it won’t make it past a judge on a second degree murder charge … everything in the affidavit is completely consistent with a defense of self-defense.” Dershowitz called the affidavit “irresponsible” and “unethical.”
After ABC reported on the photo of Zimmerman’s bleeding head, which suggests that Martin was indeed bashing his head into the ground, as Zimmerman has claimed, Dershowitz spoke again. He told Breitbart News that if prosecutors had the photo when they released the affidavit, then leaving it out was a “grave ethical violation,” because such affidavits must contain “all relevant information.” He continued:
An affidavit that willfully misstates undisputed evidence known to the prosecution is not only unethical but borders on perjury because an affiant swears to tell not only the truth, but the whole truth, and suppressing an important part of the whole truth is a lie. … [I]t’s not only immoral, but stupid. The whole country is watching. What do they benefit from having half-truths in an affidavit?
Prosecutors, he said, certainly knew about the photograph and evidence that establishes the veracity of Zimmerman’s account: “We do know that there were earlier photographs before the affidavit was done that strongly suggested blood on the back of the head,” he told Breitbart News, “and we know the police had first access to him, so if there was blood they would know about it.”
Other lawyers, as The New American has reported, believe the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman is a tactical error, because prosecutors cannot prove that Zimmerman “evinc[ed] a depraved mind regardless of human life,” a condition for proving guilt in such a crime under Florida law.
Some in the legal profession have said they believe that prosecutors “overcharged” Zimmerman in order to force a plea to a lesser crime such as manslaughter.
Zimmerman apologized directly to the Martin family at his bond hearing on Friday: “I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not.”
The same day, ABC News released the photograph of the back of Zimmerman’s head. The Martin family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, doesn’t think the photo means anything. “How bad could it have been if they didn't take him to the hospital [and] didn't stitch him up,” Crump told ABC.
Photo: People attend a rally demanding justice for Trayvon Martin in Freedom Plaza, March 24, 2012, in Washington : AP Images
