6 Arrested After Black Woman Attacked She Was Jumped After Asking Them If They Were Skinheads
A black woman said six people attacked her in a convenience store after she asked them if they were skinheads, and one assailant used a racial slur.
Thursday’s attack was the latest in a string of apparent race-based crimes in Colorado, and came three days after 1,000 people attended an anti-hate rally in downtown Denver.
Shomie Francis, 26, of suburban Aurora told police she was jumped as she was getting some food at a 7-Eleven about 2 a.m. Thursday. Paramedics treated her for cuts and wounds to her face.
Francis said she asked the suspects if they were skinheads, they said “yes” and started hitting her. “To be hit by that many people at once … it felt like forever,” she said.
Police spokeswoman Virginia Lopez told The Denver Post the store’s videotapes showed that the incident began when Francis asked one of the female suspects if she was a skinhead.
But that “does not justify any type of racial comment or physical violence,” Lopez said.
The suspects ran away as 12 police cars pulled up. Five adults and a juvenile were arrested for investigation of ethnic intimidation and assault. Bond was set at $10,000 for the adults Friday.
Denver Police Sgt. Michael O’Neill said investigators on Friday were trying to determine whether Francis’ assailants were skinheads because two had long hair long and another was Hispanic.
O’Neill also said, “To call it a beating would be an exaggeration.”
But Andrew Hudson, a spokesman for Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, called the incident “an atrocious act of violence and we’re determined to prosecute those involved.”
Concern about hate crimes erupted this month after the fatal shootings of a Denver police officer and a West African man by young men with ties to white supremacists.
Policeman Bruce VanderJagt was killed on Nov. 12 in a shootout with a member of a group called the Denver Skins. The suspect then killed himself with the officer’s gun.
On Nov. 19, Oumar Dia was gunned down at a bus stop and Jeannie VanVelkinburgh, a nurse who tried to help him, was shot in the back, a wound that left her paralyzed. One of the two suspects arrested in the attack describes himself as a skinhead, and said in television interviews that he shot Dia because he was black.
Skinheads have been linked to racist groups, although some deny involvement with white supremacists, saying they are aligned with a movement of working-class youths in England.
xxxx NAACP TO WEIGH IN Thursday’s attack prompted the Denver NAACP to schedule a news conference next week to announce its recommendations for dealing with the wave of hate crimes that have shaken Colorado.