The black man beaten in a Charlottesville parking garage by white supremacists after a โUnite the Rightโ 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 felony charge of unlawful wounding after a man, identified by Harrisโs attorney as Harold Ray Crews, reported that he was injured by the 20-year-old during the August brawl. Crews, who describes himself as a โSouthern Nationalistโ and an attorney on Twitter, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The magistrateโs 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 cityโs police department by surprise.
โWe were not expecting this. We were expecting to do our own investigation into the manโs allegations,โ said Detective Sgt. Jake Via, who is supervising the parking garage case.
But alleged crime victims can go to magistrates for warrants after theyโve filed police reports.
Harrisโs 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 groupโs North Carolina chapter, was not injured โin any wayโ by Harris, Merritt said.
โWe find it highly offensive and upsetting,โ Merritt said, โbut whatโs more jarring is that heโs been charged with the same crime as the men who attacked him.โ
[Black man attacked at Charlottesville rally faces felony charge]
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.
Harrisโs 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, a 22-year-old from 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, โWeโre still investigating the matter.โ
King, who has spent hundreds of hours poring over photos and video footage of the rally and the parking garage attack, said he was appalled that Harris has been charged.
โI am disgusted that the justice system bent over backwards to issue a warrant for one of the primary victims of that day, when I and others had to fight like hell to get that same justice system to prosecute people who were vicious in their attacks against Harris and others,โ King said. โNow, weโre seeing white supremacists celebrate on social media, bragging about Harrisโs arrest. Theyโre hailing this as a victory.โ
Indeed, after the charge was announced, Hunter Wallace, a prominent white nationalist, issued a celebratory tweet โ along with a photo of the main character from the film โAmerican Psychoโ grinning widely.
โDid you hear the news?โ Wallace asked. โDeAndre Harris is going to jail. Yeah, he is being booked this morning. His whole story was another race hoax.โ
Avnel Coates, the chief magistrate for the district that includes Charlottesville, declined to say whether she issued the arrest warrant. She referred The Washington Post to Kristi Wright, the director of the stateโs Department of Legislative and Public Relations, who said Coates cannot comment on pending or concluded legal matters in her office.
Any alleged crime victim can approach a magistrate to obtain a warrant against the alleged perpetrator. The alleged victim must file a police report, and then the magistrate needs probable cause to issue an arrest warrant, based on that personโs testimony.
Via said Harrisโs alleged victim did file a complaint with police, who told him theyโd investigate the allegations. Crews apparently also went to the magistrateโs office, which needed only evidence of a police report to issue a warrant.
โThe arrest warrant was based solely on the victimโs testimony,โ Via said.
Once the warrant is served on Harris โ probably this week โ the decision of whether to prosecute the case falls to Commonwealthโs Attorney Warner D. โDaveโ Chapman. The prosecutor told The Post on Tuesday evening that it wouldnโt be appropriate to comment on a pending investigation.
[Finding the white supremacists who beat a black man in Charlottesville]
Meanwhile, King and the other online sleuths are waiting for the police department to act on their evidence against Goodwin, whom they initially nicknamed โShieldโ because of what he was carrying that day.
They watched footage of the parking garage attack multiple times from different angles. They noticed that โShieldโ had stuffed his large ponytail into the back of his military helmet. They measured his military goggles and examined his plastic, body-length shield. They zoomed in and saw that he wore a twisted, copper-colored bracelet. They also discovered that he wore a Traditionalist Worker Party pin.
โDear Jacob Scott Goodwin, age 22, of Ward, Arkansas,โ King posted on his own Facebook page Sept. 24. โWe have looked for you for a month. In the end it was your hair, your bracelets, your glasses, your tattoo on your forearm, the white supremacist pins and necklaces, and your own bragging online that helped us identify you as one of the felony attackers of DeAndre Harris in Charlottesville. Soon, you will be arrested.โ
King and his online investigators also gathered information that led to the arrests of two other alleged attackers: Daniel P. Borden, 18, of Ohio, and Alex Michael Ramos, 33, of Georgia. Both have been charged with malicious wounding.
They also identified a suspected attacker from a separate incident during the Charlottesville rally โ a man accused of punching a counterprotester on the street. Dennis Mothersbaugh, 37, who lives in North Vernon, Ind., was arrested by police Sept. 28 and charged with assault and battery, and awaits extradition to Virginia.
โItโs me, and maybe 15 people, all Internet volunteers, weโre all doing this together,โ said King, a columnist with the Intercept. โWe have Facebook messages, Twitter and email conversations, and whenever we find something, we share it. Weโre doing it knowing we canโt afford to make a mistake.โ
In video of the parking garage fight, the man identified as Crews tries to spear a counterprotester with the pole of a Confederate flag. Harris retaliates, swinging a flashlight at Crews, appearing to strike him. But Harrisโs attorney, Merritt, said that the flashlight failed โto make significant contactโ and that Crews was injured in a separate incident that did not involve Harris.
Within seconds of Harris swinging the flashlight, he was kicked to the ground by a group of six white supremacists, who began hitting him with wooden sticks and a large board. In the video, the man activists have identified as Goodwin, clad in military tactical gear, kicks Harris. At one point, he appears to strike Harris with his shield. As the fight is ending, a counterprotester sucker-punches Goodwinโs helmeted head.
Goodwin did not return a message seeking comment.
In an interview, his mother, Tamera Goodwin, who also attended the Charlottesville rally, confirmed that it is her son in the video wearing military tactical gear and carrying a shield. That day, she asked him about his involvement in the attack.
โI told him, โIt does look like you kicked him,โ but he said, โNo, Mom, I didnโt,โโโ she said.
โHe said, โWe just tried to get out, but there was no way out other than to fight back.โโโ
King and his team noticed that โShieldโ was wearing a red pin with the number 88 โ code for โHeil Hitler,โ because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Then, they focused on the pin for the Traditionalist Worker Party, a white nationalist group run by Matthew Heimbach.
[This white nationalist who shoved a Trump protester may be the next David Duke]
Maybe, they thought, โShieldโ had attended the Traditionalist Worker Party rally in Pikesยญville, Ky., in the spring. They began sifting through the partyโs public Facebook pages for photos from the gathering.