National Post
Marcel Tetrault, Postmedia News · Thursday, Jul. 29, 2010
COURTENAY, B.C. — Three white men who fought a lone black man in an incident that was recorded and posted on YouTube — where it went viral and sparked a major outcry — have been found guilty of common assault by a B.C. judge.
“The acid fog of racism permeates this case,” Judge Peter Doherty said Thursday as he made his ruling.
“Three young white men, fuelled by alcohol and testosterone and their own immaturity, crossed paths with a black man and lives changed forever.”
The incident occurred on July 3 last year after Adam David Huber, Robert William Roy Rodgers and David Samuel White had spent the afternoon drinking beer and tubing on the Puntledge River.
As they returned home, they decided to stop for a burger in Courtenay, B.C. As Huber and Rodgers rode in the cab of the pickup White, riding in the box, hurled a racial slur at black man Jay Phillips as they passed him on the road.
Mr. Phillips responded by swearing at White and throwing his water bottle at the truck.
“Mr. White then said ‘F— you, you f—ing n—er, we’re going to come back and kill you and your family,’” the judge said.
“What Mr. White said was ugly, racist and provoking. It is not surprising, then . . . that [Mr. Phillips] was enraged.”
The fight that ensued was widely viewed on the video-sharing website YouTube, but the judge said the viral video is misleading. It shows a segment of the altercation, but an independent witness who saw the beginning of the incident confirmed that Mr. Phillips invited the three men to a fist fight.
“Mr. Phillips was angry to the point of being entirely irrational,” the judge said. “In his quite understandable blind rage, he wanted to strike out and [was] entirely willing to take on all of his tormentors.”
When Mr. Phillips was knocked to the ground, near the end of the YouTube video, he was pummelled with punches and kicked in the ribs.
It was three kicks to Mr. Phillips torso, delivered by Rodgers, that convicted the three men.
Those kicks were outside the bounds of a fist fight, said Judge Doherty, and Mr. Phillips’ ribs were sore for about two months. As such, the injuries constituted bodily harm and that invalidated Mr. Phillips’ prior consent to fight.
The judge noted that neither Rodgers nor Huber hurled racial slurs, only White.
Mr. Phillips’ mother, Kirsten, said she is beginning to feel sorry for the three young men convicted of assaulting her son, but still hopes they will spend time behind bars for their actions.
“Their stupidity and drinking . . . is going to maybe put them away for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care what the judge says or anybody else says. It was racially motivated and that’s the end of it.”
She said the high-profile incident has woken the community up to the racism that exists.
“Racial slurs hurled at [people] from car windows and such happen all the time,” she said. “There are a lot of people that are angry about this, white people. They aren’t racist themselves and they don’t want anything to do with racism or racist people.”
Crown prosecutor Bob Richardson said he would study the judge’s findings before deciding whether to ask that the racial aspect of the crime be considered an aggravating factor under hate-crime legislation.
A sentencing date has not yet been set, but the maximum penalty for common assault, even if it is deemed a hate crime, is six months in jail.
Comox Valley Echo
