Two Alabama men have been charged with a hate crime and robbery after they followed a Black driver for 10 miles. The pair stole his wallet, assaulted him while yelling racial slurs then left him on the side of the road according to court records.
The two suspects have been identified as Eric Dean Wise, 33, and Travis Bryan Phillips, 34. The men were later captured by police when Phillips bragged about how they had beat the victim because of his race, according to the report.
“The defendants’ actions in this case are stomach churning and heinous,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
Court documents said 911 callers called saying two white men assaulting and threatening to kill a Black man in the 30300 block of 9th Avenue South in Federal Way in Auburn. The two suspects then fled the scene, however, an officer would later pull them over. The suspects then claimed that the victim had rear-ended them earlier, that’s why they pursued him.
Court records describe what happened next:
“They (Phillips and Wise) began beating him, yelling racial epithets as they did so. The noise of this beating and the slurs being yelled alerted an unrelated party, who could hear it from inside his home. That witness saw the victim get hit at least 15 times by a defendant before the victim was drug from his car. The witness then saw the defendants repeatedly kick the victim multiple times in the head and body as the victim lay down on the ground.
The suspects “beat him to a bloody pulp” and were covered in the victim’s blood when contacted by police, according to court documents.
“The injuries suffered by the victim at the hands of these men during this hate crime were extreme and required hospitalization,” court records say. “When questioned about it, defendant Phillips proudly proclaimed he did these crimes because the victim was a Black man. This was a brutal hate crime.”
Both suspects are now being held in the King County Jail awaiting trial.
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