Teens admit to hate crime after attack on Black man posted on social media
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Two teenage boys who attacked a Black 18-year-old man with punches and racial slurs in a Simi Valley parking lot over the summer have admitted to committing a hate crime and felony assault, the Ventura County district attorney’s office said.
The Aug. 1 attack, captured on video, shows the victim, Michael Robinson, being swarmed by a group of teenage boys in a Regal Cinemas parking lot about 11 p.m., as they pummel him with punches and racial slurs as he tries to get away.
Earlier this month, Ventura County prosecutors announced they were charging five boys in connection with the attack, all of them 16 or 17 years old, including one boy who is the son of a Simi Valley police sergeant.
Three of the teens were charged with felony assault and special allegations of a hate crime, prosecutors said. A fourth was charged with felony assault, misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor criminal threats. The fifth was charged with misdemeanor threats and misdemeanor battery.
Their names haven’t been released because they’re minors.
An L.A. County employee has been charged with felony hate crimes after allegedly breaking into the county’s headquarters three times in the last two weeks and placing death threats on the desk of his Asian co-worker.
The two boys who admitted to their charges on Thursday are scheduled to be sentenced next month. The remaining defendants are scheduled to be arraigned in mid-November.
In videos of the attack, a group of boys are seen punching Robinson and heard saying the N-word as they chased Robinson around the lot, according to footage of the incident. Two other people were also injured in the attack, officials said.
After the attack, Robinson told Fox 11 Los Angeles that the group of teens targeted his friends first before turning on him, slamming him into a car, pushing his head into a trash can and punching him in the back of the head.
“Honestly, I thought I was going to die,” he said.
Simi Valley Police Department spokesperson Ryan Morton said the sergeant whose son was charged in the attack is not a part of the investigation.
According to Robinson’s guardian, the attack was connected to a previous altercation between the same two groups of teens.
“He [Robinson] was hunted down, and it was very disgusting,” Robinson’s guardian, Brittany Martin, told Fox 11. “This is not the first time that these kids are actually doing this.”
Though the date of the previous altercation was not immediately known, one of the teens who admitted to a hate crime on Thursday also admitted to making criminal threats during an incident on May 30 at the same location. One of the other teens in the group is also being prosecuted in connection with the May 30 incident.
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