Absolutely Horrible, African-American Man Attacked By Racist Man

 

DaShawn Horne was beaten in Auburn on Jan. 20, and has been at Harborview Medical Center ever since. The man accused of attacking DaShawn Horne with a baseball bat became enraged when he learned his sister had spent the night with DaShawn Horne, Auburn police said. The man who attacked DaShawn has been charged with malicious harassment, the state's hate-crime statute. 

LaDonna Horne still can't quite believe an alleged hate crime landed her 26-year-old son in the intensive care unit with a traumatic brain injury. 

“You just never think it’s going to happen to you or so close to home. I was just telling someone, ‘It’s different out here. Everybody gets along. It’s so diverse,’ ” Horne, who is African American, said Tuesday.

“As his uncles, we taught him to protect himself,” said Ray Jenkins, who is considered family even though he isn’t related to Horne. “But to be attacked from behind because of the color of his skin …”

“Who can be prepared for that?” said LaDonna Horne’s brother, Rodney King, finishing his best friend’s sentence.

The suspect was thankfully caught. Julian Tuimauga, of Auburn, was charged last week  first-degree assault and malicious harassment   —  the state's hate-crime statute, and remains in the King County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. 

From what his family has been able to piece together, Horne, a mail handler for the U.S. Postal Service who lives in Kent, had a rare Friday night off Jan. 19. He wanted to go to a particular nightclub in Seattle’s Pioneer Square but couldn’t get in, so he went to another nearby club instead. There, he met a woman in her 20s and the two “hit it off,” LaDonna Horne said.

At the end of the night, she invited him back to her place in Auburn.

The next morning, the woman called a Lyft car to drive Horne home, according to his relatives and charging papers.

It was the Lyft driver — who had backed into the driveway of a home in the 600 block of 27th Street Southeast — who witnessed the assault and called 911 just before 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 20, the charges say.

According to charging papers:

Tuimauga was carrying an aluminum baseball bat when he approached the Lyft driver and asked who the driver was there to pick up. The driver gave Tuimauga’s sister’s name as the person who had requested the ride, then watched as Tuimauga walked to a corner of the fenced yard.

A short time later, the driver saw Horne walk along the side of the house toward the driveway and heard him argue with Tuimauga, the charges say. He “then heard a thump sound like a bat had struck something,” according to charging papers.

The driver looked back and saw Tuimauga strike Horne in the head twice with the bat and watched him fall to the ground, the charges say.

At that point, the driver heard Tuimauga say, “This is what happens when you bring black people around here,” the charges say.

The Lyft driver drove away and parked two houses down, where he saw Tuimauga hit Horne three more times with the bat while he was lying unconscious on the ground, the charges say.

Part of the attack was captured by a neighbor’s video-surveillance camera, and the footage shows Tuimauga armed with the bat and Horne “falling into the frame” already unconscious, charging papers say.

While Horne was lying bloody in the front yard, Tuimauga used his cellphone to video-record the injured man while yelling racial slurs at him, the charges say.

According to the charges, Tuimauga repeatedly used the N-word.

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This whole thing is not surprising, but it's also heartbreaking. Racism is not dead or anywhere near gone and something we should worry about. My heart definitely goes out to Horne's family and we hope he makes a full recovery and his attacker is put away for a long time. I just wish Attempted Murder was added.