Black beating victim charged with crime

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The black man beaten in a Charlottesville, Va., parking garage by white supremacists after a “Unite the Right” rally has been charged with a crime in connection with the incident, even as police continue searching for some of the people who kicked him to the ground and pummeled him.

A local magistrate issued an arrest warrant Monday for DeAndre Harris on a charge of unlawful wounding after a man, identified by Harris’ attorney as Harold Ray Crews, reported that he had been injured by the 20-year-old during the brawl. Crews, who describes himself as a “Southern Nationalist” and a lawyer, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The magistrate’s charge against Harris, who suffered a spinal injury and a head laceration that required 10 stitches, came less than 48 hours after a second rally by white supremacists and white nationalists in Charlottesville and caught the city’s police department by surprise.

“We were not expecting this. We were expecting to do our own investigation into the man’s allegations,” said Detective Sgt. Jake Via, who is supervising the parking garage case.

But alleged crime victims can go to magistrates for warrants after they’ve filed police reports.

Harris’ attorney, S. Lee Merritt, denounced the charge and said it was orchestrated by the League of the South, an organization labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Crews, who runs the group’s North Carolina chapter, was not injured “in any way” by Harris, Merritt said.

“We find it highly offensive and upsetting,” Merritt said, “but what’s more jarring is that he’s been charged with the same crime as the men who attacked him.”

The brutal attack — which occurred in a garage next to police department headquarters — was captured in a video that went viral in the days after the rally. The confrontation has come to symbolize the racial hatred that was unleashed in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, when white supremacists, Klan members and neo-Nazis clashed with counterprotesters. The violence left one counterprotester, Heather Heyer, dead.

Harris’ beating has inspired a social media campaign by activists to identify his six attackers, two of whom have been arrested. A third man, Jacob Scott Goodwin, 22, of Ward, Ark., has been accused by the online sleuths, who are led by journalist and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King.

When asked about Goodwin, Via, the Charlottesville detective, said, “We’re still investigating the matter.”