I didn't even want to cover this story. I still don't.
This country is going to ugly, dark places.
Eight Little Scamps who I'm sure we'll soon here were "totally turning their lives around" kicked and stomped a white student to death.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) - On Tuesday afternoon, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department held a media conference to provide an update on its homicide investigation after a Rancho High School teen student was severely beaten and later died from his injuries.
A Metro spokesperson announced that the department has eight suspects in custody who will be charged with murder in connection with Lewis' death.
Homicide Lt. Jason Johansson provided details on the incident that led to the victim's death, explaining that a fight occurred in an alley next to Rancho High School just after school let out on November 1. He said that a citizen found Lewis unresponsive after the beating and brought him back to the school.
The victim was taken to UMC where doctors determined that he had suffered "non-survivable head trauma." Lt. Johansson referenced a video of the beating that has circulated on social media, calling it "void of humanity."
He said that the fight was over a pair of stolen wireless headphones and possibly a vape pen, which were taken from friends of the victim. All parties involved agreed to meet in the alley to fight, according to police.
"As soon as a punch is thrown, ten subjects immediately swarm him," he said. He added that the department was able to identify approximately ten subjects that were involved in the murder and eight of those have been "positively identified" as suspects.
Those eight suspects were taken into custody by LVMPD in participation with an FBI Criminal Apprehension Team. Nine search warrants were executed in total and investigators seized evidence including clothing seen in the video of the beating, as well as multiple cell phones.
Johansson stated that all of the suspects are between 13-17 years of age and that the process is underway for them to be charged as adults. LVMPD will be releasing photos of two individuals who participated in the beating but have not yet been identified.
"There's a high likelihood that there's additional video out there that we don't have," he said, imploring anyone with information about the beating to contact the department immediately.
"Please don't put your head in the sand," he added regarding the topic of discussing the incident with children. He also said that there is "no evidence at this time" that the murder was a hate crime.
It's not a hate crime because the victim was white and the perps are black, of course.
John Sexton:
As Beege pointed out earlier, the media is going out of its way not to mention the obvious racial angle to this attack. Jonathan Lewis was white and all of his attackers were black. Fox News mentions it implicitly when it points out that police have decided this wasn't a hate crime.
Johannson described the video as "void of humanity" and said there was no evidence the incident could be considered a hate crime.
And credit to the Washington Post which actually explained the context.
At Tuesday's news conference, Johansson was asked whether authorities were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime since Lewis was White and most of the teens involved in the beating are Black. Police indicated they do not believe it was a hate crime."Right now, I have no evidence at all that this is a hate crime," Johansson said. "It is a murder, which in my opinion is a very heinous crime in and of itself, but I do not have evidence of a hate crime."
It's really hard to imagine that if this were 10+ white kids beating to death one black kid that anyone would believe there wasn't a hate crime taking place. In that case Benjamin Crump would have parachuted into town and every reader would know about the racial aspect of the story from the headline.
As others have pointed out: If there were no Hamas-like video of the murder, the police wouldn't even have bothered doing this much.