The family of one of the black suspects caught on viral video beating up white people in downtown Cincinnati made the incendiary claim that the only reason the assault made national news is that one victim was a white woman.
Police have made multiple arrests after the video of the woman in a black flowery dress who tried to intervene was sucker punched with a vicious blow to the blindside that knocked her to the street, resulting in serious injuries.
Among those identified in the incident is 34-year-old Montianez Merriweather, who was initially charged with aggravated riot and assault, and according to one relative, there would have been no similar outrage if the woman who was punched had a darker skin complexion.
“If it was an African American woman who got knocked out… We wouldn’t have been going through all this,” the woman told WLWT outside of court, according to the Daily Mail.
Images of the battered woman whose name is Holly have been posted to X by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who said that he received her permission to do so to help prevent such violent attacks from happening in the future.
(Image: X)
“This is Holly. She wanted to have a nice evening out with friends. Instead, she got this. Holly gave me permission to release the photos so that others will never suffer what she did,” the Ohio Republican wrote.
Holly is reportedly from Russia and has already gone back home after she was attacked.
“He’s not a racist,” said another woman who is believed to be Merriweather’s mother. “It wasn’t like they’re thugs… these Russians was walking down the street and on the video he said ‘you wanna mess with these Russians?'”
“He smacked the first guy… my child is in school, he has five kids, he’s on the B honor roll in school,” she added, according to the Daily Mail.
Also charged were 39-year-old Jermaine Matthews and 24-year-old Dekyra Vernon.
Brandon Fox, who is Matthews’ lawyer, defended his client by playing the race card.
“That is the victim that is seen running down the street screaming racial slurs, the n word,” he said of the video, the Daily Mail reported.
Even if it’s true, that doesn’t excuse the sucker punching of a defenseless woman.
“We believe that he coordinated this with Mr. Matthews,” Cincinnati police Detective Barney Blank said of Merriweather, who had reportedly been freed on bail for charges related to another crime at the time of the incident.
According to Blank, Vernon was standing in the crowd at the time of the incident and decided to charge Holly and deliver the vicious blow.
“She just interjected herself into a brawl on the street,” he said.
“They begged for that beat down!” said Cincinnati City Councilwoman Victoria Parks in a social media post that sparked outrage.
“When I saw the video, [I] thought she had been killed,” Sen. Moreno told “Fox & Friends,” adding that the pics of Holly’s injuries were “so graphic, so horrible.”
“She wanted to have a nice evening out with friends. Instead, she got this,” Moreno said.
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