A US court on Monday ordered a white supremacist group and its leader to pay $2.8 million in damages to a Black man its shield-wielding, masked members attacked while they rampaged through Boston two years ago.
In July 2022, members of the Patriot Front group pinned musician Charles Murrell against a post and then kicked and punched him, in action the US District Court in Boston ruled was meant “to promote a white supremacist agenda.”
Members of the mob reportedly also used a racial slur against their victim as they made their way down the East Coast city’s Freedom Trail during the incident.
While police investigated the violence, and a detective concluded that the “incident appeared to be more likely than not motivated in whole or in part by Anti-Black bias”, no one was prosecuted, prompting Murrell to file a civil suit in August 2023.
Murrell was on his way to play saxophone near the Boston Public Library over the Fourth of July weekend when he saw “Patriot Front moving towards him on the sidewalk, and observed signs that read, ‘Reclaim America’,” Judge Indira Talwani said in the ruling.
“The group began shoving Murrell to the group’s right, into the street. When Murrell stepped back on the sidewalk, the group pressed him up against a concrete light post, knocked him to the ground, and hit and kicked him,” the court order said.
To promote white supremacy, the group led by Thomas Rousseau has separately defaced a mural and statues of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by police as well as a mural of Black tennis star Arthur Ashe.
Talwani awarded Murrell $755,000 in damages for his injuries and lost earnings, and $2 million in punitive damages.
Rousseau did not cooperate with the civil case and was not represented by a lawyer.
