Texas Man Beaten By Neighbor Says Attack Was Racist
In Texas, a man who was brutally beaten claims racism was at the center of the attack.
"I'm traumatized," Elliot Reed, who lives in Seabrook, told KTRK.
On Friday (October 29), Reed said he came across a man who told him he didn’t belong in his own neighborhood while he rode his bike.
"He's just looking at me at the stop sign," he explained. "He said, 'You need to get out of this neighborhood because you're making a lot of people nervous.'"
Reed said he tried to get away while the man continued to antagonize him.
"He said I need to get off this neighborhood. He said, 'You don't live here, and if I catch you, I'm gonna do something to you,'" Reed explained to the news station.
As Reed attempted to record the man with his cell phone, he also tried to prove he lived in the neighborhood by asking another neighbor to confirm.
"When he was out of the car, this is when he said the 'N-word,'" said Reed, who said the man subsequently charged him and attacked him.
Court documents reveal several witnesses told police that the man, identified as 25-year-old Collin Fries, chased Reed from the road to a sidewalk before punching him.
"And that's the last thing I remember," he said.
Witnesses told police Fries punched Reed several times and even stood over and beat him as he was unconscious.
"He was attacked because he [is] Black," Angie Reed, his wife, told KTRK.
Reed suffered a broken tooth, fractured cheekbone, broken blood vessel in his eye, in addition to several cuts that required more than a dozen stitches in face.
"I don't care where you live, you don't deserve to be disrespected by the color of your skin," Reed's wife said.
Fries has reportedly been charged with misdemeanor aggravated assault. When asked why the charge was just a misdemeanor, the Harris County District Attorney's Office said that Seabrook's investigating officers had not yet submitted evidence.
"We are still in the initial stages of the review of this incident," a district attorney's office representative said in a statement, which also addressed the family's concern that the attack was a hate crime. "What happens with regard to whether a charge is increased or a hate crime enhancement is added will depend upon the totality of the evidence."
