‘F--k whites’ attack is ‘hate’
Live-stream tormenters charged
The four black people who kidnapped and tortured a mentally disabled white man — shouting, “F--k Donald Trump” and, “F--k white people” as they livestreamed the savage attack online — were each charged with a hate crime on Thursday, Chicago authorities said.
Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville, Ill., and Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, all of the Windy City, were also slapped with charges of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after the Facebook footage went viral this week.
Hill was hit with additional charges of robbery, residential burglary and possession of a stolen motor vehicle, while Cooper and Brittany Covington were also charged with residential burglary, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The four allegedly held hostage an 18-year-old special-needs youth, whose name has not been released, and repeatedly assaulted him in an apartment on the West Side of Chicago.
They can be seen slapping and kicking the victim — ashing their cigars on his gagged and bound up body and attempting to cut his hair at one point with a knife, but slicing his scalp instead.
“F--k Donald Trump” and “F--k white people!” they tell the victim. “Say, ‘I love black people!’ ”
Chicago police officials said Thursday it didn’t take much to sway them on the hate-crime charges, due to the racist rhetoric and “deference to [the victim’s] mental capacity.”
Officials said the victim — from the nearby city of Crystal Lake — was friends with one of his attack- ers, Jordan Hill, and knew him from a school they both attended in nearby Aurora, Ill.
On New Year’s Eve, the victim’s parents dropped him off at a McDonald’s in the Chicago suburb of Streamwood, and he was supposed to spend the night with Hill.
But Hill instead stole a van and drove the victim into the city, officials said.
For the next two days, the victim slept in the van, unaware that it was stolen, and on Tuesday he and Hill went to the Covington sisters’ apartment, where the crime was allegedly committed.
What started out as a “play fight” escalated between Hill and the victim, officials said.
The man was allegedly tied up in a corner for roughly six hours, begging his captors to stop torturing him.
In a separate clip that surfaced on social media, the victim is purportedly forced to drink toilet water.
“It’s sickening,” Johnson said. “It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat someone like that.”
All four suspects are expected to appear in bond court Friday.