After allegedly being called “niggers” then bludgeoned with a tire iron, hammer and baseball bat outside a house party on March 9 in St. Peters, four young men – three blacks and one Hispanic – want their assailants charged with attempted murder under hate crime laws.
“It was a hate crime: They called us ‘niggers,’ and every one of us could have died from the way they hit us,” said 19-year-old Lorenzo Bryant.
Bryant suffered multiple broken bones in his nose after allegedly being pounded in the face with a hammer. His nose was glued together, as confirmed by a report from Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital. Bryant will have to undergo facial reconstruction or plastic surgery.
Tony Campos, 19, had to get his head stapled 11 times to close a wound suffered from a hammer blow to the back of his head, as indicated in a report from SSM St. Joseph Health Center. Campos said he was also hit in the back with a tire iron.
Chad Jackson, 23, said he was hit with a baseball bat in the back as he attempted to leave the party after being told to do so by a young white man yelling racial epithets. Jackson said he was hit in the head after being chased outside, then struck in the forearm with a tire iron as he attempted to block the swings. He received a hospital bill Tuesday in the amount of $9,364.30, but said that the alleged assailants should pay for it.
Jackson received stitches for a laceration in his head and suffered headaches, as described in a medical report from SSM St. Joseph Heath Center.
Another victim, Mark Elliott, 19, suffered a closed head injury, concussion, contusion in the neck and a laceration in his left eyebrow that required seven stitches, as confirmed by a doctor’s report from Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital. Elliott said his injuries came from blows with a baseball bat.
Released on recognizance
The bloodbath took place about 1:30 a.m. on March 9 in the 6100 block of Mexico Road at Spencer Road in St. Peters.
The young men said they were jumped by three to four assailants, whom they identified as members of a gang of young white men called the Midget Mafia.
St. Peters Police responded to the incident and initially charged the alleged assailants with 2nd degree assault. They were released the next day on a recognizance (signature, no fee) bond.
St. Peters Police did not release the assailants’ names and said the department did not yet know who all was involved, but was investigating.
St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas said he had received a report from the St. Peters Police Department, but sent it back to the police for further investigation.
Banas acknowledged Christopher Potter to be a suspect (identified by the victims), and Jackson as a victim in the brutal assaults.
A municipal court in St. Peters hears misdemeanor cases. Felonies are settled in St. Charles County Court.
St. Peters Police Department isn’t looking at the alleged assaults as a hate crime, but said it would if something led to it, according to Officer Brad Norris in the public affairs office.
A hate crime is a criminal offense committed against a person, property or society which is motivated, in whole or part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin, according to the Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if St. Peters was trying to keep this quiet,” Bryant said.
Bryant said responding officers didn’t take any photos at the scene, but later photographed the injured men at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Charles.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to know something like this happened in my town,” Bryant said.
“I think it’s a shame that we still live in a country where people are still being discriminating against because of color,” said Jackson, who said he is biracial.
“I’m used to being around blacks and whites, so it hurts to know this kind of thing is still alive.”
Jackson’s mother, Catherine Jackson, said she moved to Ferguson in 2003 because of racism in St. Charles, St. Peters and O’Fallon.
“They made life really hard for black people to move out here,” said Catherine Jackson, a white woman who married a black man.
“That’s why they don’t want a Metro to run out there – this is white flight.”
“They say racism isn’t around anymore, but they just know how to hide it,” Bryant said.
Bryant said if he and his friends had been the perpetrators, they would still be in jail on attempted murder charges.
Hate crimes incidents rose nearly 8 percent in 2006, according to an FBI report.
In that year, 7,722 criminal hate crime incidents involved 9,080 specific criminal offenses, including 5,449 against individuals, 3,593 against property and 38 against society at large.
The most frequent impetus was racial bias, accounting for 51.8 percent of the incidents in 2006. That was down slightly from the 54.7 percent in 2005.
Of the 7,330 offenders identified by police, 58.6 percent were white, 20.6 percent were black, 12.9 percent were of unknown racial background, and other races accounted for the remainder.
A lack of full participation by the more than 17,000 police agencies around the nation somewhat undermines year-to-year comparisons of the prevalence of hate crimes.
