Back in January, two men and two women in Chicago were arrested after they used Facebook to broadcast images of themselves torturing a mentally disabled man. The defendants were black and their victim was white. The case was classified as a hate crime.
The attack was horrific. CBS News Chicago described it:
In the first 30-minute video, which apparently was posted live on Facebook on Tuesday, the victim is backed into a corner, his mouth duct-taped shut. The victim’s clothes were cut, he was peppered with cigarette ashes, and then his hair cut with a knife until his scalp bled.Several people can be seen laughing and eating during the attack, in addition to making disparaging remarks about President-elect Donald Trump and using racially charged language. At one point, while the victim is backed into a corner, someone is heard shouting “F*** Donald Trump. F*** white people.”Thursday morning, Chicago police confirmed they are investigating a second video, which surfaced on Twitter, and appears to show the suspects grabbing the victim’s head, shoving it into a toilet, and forcing him to drink.Someone can be heard yelling “Drink that s*** right f***ing now. … Drink the toilet water, b****! Say f*** Trump! Say f*** Trump!”
We covered the story as it broke:
All four defendants in the case have been in jail since their arrest but one of them was just released with some conditions. CBS News Chicago reports:
Woman In Facebook Torture Case Banned From Social Media For 4 YearsA woman who live-streamed herself and a trio of friends abusing a mentally disabled man and taunting him with racial insults was sentenced to probation Friday after spending nearly a year behind bars.Brittany Covington, 19, had been held at the Cook County Jail without bond since January, when she and co-defendants Tesfaye Cooper, Jordan Hill and her 24-year-old sister Tanishia Covington were arrested on kidnapping and hate-crime charges.The plea deal prosecutors made with Brittany Covington makes her the first of the four to be released, though she will remain on probation for four years and is barred from contact with Cooper and Hill, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.Other terms of the plea agreement bars Covington from using social media for four years, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office tells CBS 2.Brittany Covington narrated Facebook Live video of the others tormenting an 18-year-old white man in the apartment she shared with her sister.
The report includes some details which explain how the arrests were made:
When a woman who lived in the building complained about the the noise and threatened to call the police, the sisters kicked in the woman’s door in anger and took some of her property, police said. While the others had run to the other apartment, the victim managed to escape, and police found him, wearing shorts and his torn clothing in the January weather, a block away. Streamwood police officials say the victim’s parents had made a missing-persons report after their son didn’t return home.
Miss Covington got off easy. It remains to be seen if her co-defendants will be as lucky.
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