Posted on 07/31/2020 7:25:45 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The attorney for a white man accused of being a racist in a hit-and-run accident last month is decrying the rush to judge his client, who he says was only trying to flee a dangerous mob when he ran into a Black woman around bar time in Downtown Madison.
Brendan O’Neil, 26, of Sun Prairie, is charged with felony hit-and-run in the June 21 incident on Frances Street near University Avenue that left 24-year-old Alize Carter with abrasions, a fractured hand and reportedly a concussion. In a brief initial hearing by video Thursday, his bond was left at $350, which he had already paid after spending about an hour in jail June 25 after his arrest and after police had referred only a misdemeanor charge of hit-and-run to prosecutors. The felony charge did not come with a hate-crime enhancer.
O’Neil’s attorney, Chris Van Wagner, said his client was sober at the time of the accident, and in a three-page statement issued after the hearing, said he was driving three friends home because they had been drinking, and before pulling out into traffic had checked with some of the people in the street to see whether he’d be allowed to pass.
They said he could, Van Wagner said, but once on the street, the crowd surrounded his truck, started rocking it and hitting it, and some “rioters climbed into the bed of the truck and started bouncing O’Neil’s truck up and down.”
“Several men began to punch at O’Neil through his open window, and started grabbing for his keys and steering wheel,” he said. “They even tried pulling him out.”
Van Wagner said O’Neil then saw a man in the crowd about 8 feet away “lift his shirt and reach for what looked like a 9 mm handgun in his waistband,” at which point, he accelerated south on Frances and hit Carter.
Acting Madison Police Chief Vic Wahl said the day after the incident that there had been reports of people threatening O’Neil before the accident, and according to the criminal complaint in the case, O’Neil told police that people in the crowd “were reaching into his vehicle” and “trying to grab him and pull him out of the vehicle,” and that he drove off when he saw a person in the crowd with a gun in his waistband. No mention is made in the complaint of any video that might have captured the moments before the accident.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne declined to comment on whether there’s evidence showing O’Neil being threatened in the moments before he sped off.
Van Wagner said that with the noise and commotion, O’Neil didn’t know he’d hit someone at first, although he acknowledged that one of his passengers had said that he might have hit a girl. He said O’Neil discovered there was still someone in the bed of his truck about a half block after the accident, and stopped and told her to get out, and that after that, he saw a car chasing him.
“O’Neil had no opportunity to return safely to the scene,” Van Wagner said. “And by the time he had escaped the car of rioters who gave chase, the ambulances had already arrived.”
Van Wagner said that as soon as he heard a message later that morning from police that they were looking for him, he called police and cooperated in the investigation.
He said his client “deeply regrets” that Carter was injured, and that he has tried to contact her about filing a claim through O’Neil’s insurance.
“Yet he also knows it was because of the actions of the mob that it happened,” he said.
Attempts to reach Carter through two social media pages that appear to be hers were not successful.
The incident had also sparked controversy after some of the people at the scene complained that the police department’s response was slow or overly aggressive. Video released the day after the incident from city surveillance cameras shows police briefly deployed pepper spray as a crowd of people milled about and at least one person moved aggressively toward an officer trying to clear the area so emergency responders could attend to Carter.
Wahl said on the day after the crash that throughout the police response — which came amid local and national protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis — many in the crowd refused to give police room and lobbed verbal abuse at officers.
The day after the hit-and-run, a group active in organizing protests in Madison in the wake of Floyd’s death called the incident a “hate crime” on its Facebook page. Another activist group, Urban Triage, alleged “a white supremacist intentionally hit” Carter. Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway also issued a statement the day after the incident suggesting it might have been a hate crime.
Van Wagner called the accusation a “lie fabricated by angry people with their own agendas.”
“He doesn’t use social media. He’s never been political,” Van Wagner wrote. “And until that night, he had never been forced to protect the lives of four people at the hands of an angry mob that included a gunman who appeared ready to draw down on them.”
He was sober - was the designated driver.
Not really. He ran through a barricade, and drove forward into a car that was stopped.
If you can insert a pinky fingertip into the barrel, does it matter?
Thank you. I try. CVW
“...The attorney for a white man accused of being a racist in a hit-and-run accident last month...
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