Four black people were charged with hate crimes on Thursday in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that showed a mentally disabled white man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet.
The assault went on for hours, until Chicago police found the disoriented victim walking along a street, authorities said.
The suspects, who were jailed, can be heard on the video using profanities against white people and US president-elect Donald Trump.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators initially concluded that the 18-year-old man was singled out because he has “special needs,” not because he was white.
However, authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects’ use of racial slurs and their references to his disability.
It is also possible that the suspects were trying to extort something from the victim’s family, police officials said.
The man’s parents reported their son missing on Monday and told authorities they later received text messages from people who claimed to be holding him captive.
The victim was a classmate of one of the attackers and initially went with that person voluntarily, police said.
“He’s traumatized by the incident, and it’s very tough to communicate with him at this point,” police commander Kevin Duffin said.
Excerpts of the video posted by Chicago media outlets show the victim with his mouth taped shut and slumped in a corner of a room. At least two assailants are seen cutting off his sweatshirt, and others taunt him off camera. The video shows a wound on the top of the man’s head. One person pushes the man’s head with his or her foot.
A red band also appears to be around the victim’s hands. He was tied up for four to five hours, authorities said.
The victim does not appear to make any attempt to defend himself or to escape his attackers. He is a suburban Chicago resident described by Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson as having “mental health challenges.”
The incident began on Saturday last week, when the victim and one of the suspects, 18-year-old Jordan Hill, met at a suburban McDonald’s to begin what both the victim and his parents believed would be a sleepover, police said.
Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home in Chicago, where two of the other suspects lived, Duffin said.
The victim told police what began as playful fighting escalated, and he was bound, beaten and taunted with racial slurs and disparaging comments about his mental capacity.
A downstairs neighbor who heard noises threatened to call police. When two of the suspects left and kicked down the neighbor’s door, the victim escaped. A police officer later spotted the obviously disoriented man wandering down a street.
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