*The captain of the vessel whose Black crewman was attacked by a group of intoxicated white people in Montgomery this past weekend says racism was at the heart of the dockside melee.
“It makes no sense to have six people try to beat the snot out of you just because you moved their boat up a few feet,” Harriott II skipper Jim Kittrell told The Daily Beast.
“This whole thing is just because these guys were being assholes,” Capt. Kittrell told the outlet Tuesday. “I was nice as a peach when I was talking to them at first: ‘Please, help me out here, fellas. Move the boat up a little bit.’”
We reported previously that the fracas began on Saturday evening on the Montgomery Riverfront when a group of white people refused a Black dock worker’s request to move their pontoon boat from a space reserved for the city’s riverboat, which was carrying 227 passengers.
Viral videos show a confrontation between Kittrell’s deckhand, Damien Pickett, and pontoon boaters. Pickett attempts to reason with the intoxicated group and video shows him attempting to push the pontoon boat a few feet to make room for the riverboat. Bystander video shows a white man rushing Pickett and punching him in the face.
Several others join in on the assault and reportedly hurled racial slurs at the Pickett.
Several Black bystanders were quick to rush in to help Pickett, including a “heroic” young man named Aaren, who swam across a river.
According to The Daily Beast, arrest warrants have been issued for three of the attackers, Richard Roberts, 48, Allen Todd, 23, and Zachary Shipman, 25. They face charges of third-degree assault, Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert said Tuesday.
“The white guys that attacked my deckhand—and he was a senior deckhand first mate—I can’t think of any other reason they attacked him other than it being racially motivated,” Kittrell said. “All he did was move their boat up three feet. It makes no sense to have six people try to beat the snot out of you just because you moved their boat up a few feet. In my opinion, the attack on Damien was racially motivated.”
According to Kittrell, the fight was not a “black and white” issue.
“It was just shipmates trying to help a shipmate,” he said. “They could’ve been little green men, for all they cared. When they attacked Damien, my crew was gonna jump out and do the best they could to help him out. It was my crew against the people who attacked their shipmate, that’s all it was.”
READ MORE: White Business Owner Involved in Riverboat Brawl Speaks Out: ‘I Tried to Stop It’
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