I believe that the most likely scenario at work that night was that a drunken Cicciaro thought he could goad the Whites into an act of violence by shouting racial slurs and death threats at them.
As a working class white ethnic from Queens, I have some knowledge of Cicciaro's type and what he was thinking.
He was thinking that he would spark a confrontation, he and his buddies would kick the crap out of the Whites even if the Whites got a couple of good licks in, and when the cops showed up the usual scenario would take place: both sides would accuse the others of swinging first, both sides would press charges, and then both sides would agree to drop the charges and forget the incident.
When I was growing up in the area, this was a pretty typical weekend night scenario.
I'm guessing what happened is that Cicciaro's taunting and physical aggression got the better of White's judgement. Cicciaro dared White and White was stupid enough to take the dare - and now his life is ruined because of a piece of loudmouthed trash and his willingness to take that trash's bait.
This case is about race, but not about imaginary lynch mobs or the KKK.
It is about a black man who grew up in the 60s and 70s, worked hard and made good, moving into a nice neighborhood and enjoying the respect he earned - until a snotnosed teenaged wiseass made him feel that all his hard work to achieve a level of gentility and respect was a mirage. Cicciaro humiliated him in front of his son - and that kind of humiliation can make a man snap.
Cicciaro was pushing White to see how far White would go, how much sh!t White would willingly eat, how much abuse White would willingly take. Cicciaro didn't get the answer he was looking for, and now Cicciaro's useless, assh*le father is prancing around babbling about Disney.
The whole affair is disgusting and disheartening. To top it all off, the airhead who started the ball rolling with a colossal lie doesn't even have the good sense to keep her mouth shut and accept responsibility for what she initiated with her big lying mouth.
That's another reason why calling the police in such a situation is such a grand, worthwhile thing to do.
They instantly remove all of this irrelevant interpersonal garbage that inflames any group of warring parties and bring things to a dispassionate, law-oriented level, as opposed to a superheated emotional level where nobody can hear anybody else because everybody is shouting so loudly.....and eventually somebody gets needlessly shot.
The whole affair is disgusting and disheartening.
It's also extremely sad, that Mr. White recognized the value and importance of firearms but either didn't take the time to learn about the context of their appropriate and lawful use or allowed his emotions to get the better of him and forgot whatever he may have known....the end result is the same.
It's also terribly sad that now his family is known worldwide as a family that is living completely unprotected....they are now at far greater risk than ever before. One of the innumerable advantages of living in an area that respects the Second Amendment is that even if you choose, for whatever reason, not to own a firearm, criminals will never know whether you do or you don't, and so this offers some degree of additional protection from violent crime.
In Long Island, I would imagine that criminals will typically assume that people are not well-armed, but in the case of the Whites it is now no longer an assumption....criminals the world over know for a fact that they are unarmed, and this is an incredibly dangerous situation for them.