City council declines comment on councilwoman who wrote victims ‘begged for that beatdown’
Federal investigators are looking into a brutal attack on a white couple following a concert event in downtown Cincinnati, just days after Vice President JD Vance condemned the attack.
The attack — captured in several viral videos on social media — showed what appeared to initially be a one-on-one fight near the intersection of West Fourth Street and Elm Street on July 26 during the Cincinnati Jazz Festival, according to Fox News.
Several of the videos show a predominantly black crowd kicking and punching a white man on the pavement, with one video (language warning) capturing the moment a man punched the female victim in the face, knocking her unconscious.
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It’s not clear how the fight started. The conditions of the victims were also unknown.
On Wednesday, the FBI announced an investigation was underway. At least three people have been arrested in the attack as of Wednesday. Montianez Merriweather and Jermaine Matthews were charged with felonious assault and aggravated riot, while a third suspect, Dekyra Vernon, was also charged with felonious assault and aggravated riot for allegedly striking the female victim.
Reacting to the attack over the weekend, Vance described it as a “grown man who sucker punched a middle-aged woman” and called for the attackers to be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“I haven’t seen the full context, but what I saw is a mob of lawless thugs beating up on an innocent person,” said Vance, a native of Middletown, Ohio, when asked about the viral video. While Vance said he did not have the full context for the attack, he called the footage “disgusting.”
“You had a grown man who sucker punched a middle-aged woman, and where I come from at least, when you have a grown man who sucker punches a middle-aged woman, that person oughta go to jail for a very long time,” he said.
Calling out those public officials who have “allowed lawlessness to run wild,” Vance said he’s optimistic that “law enforcement in the state of Ohio takes their job seriously,” adding, “The only way to destroy that street violence is to take the thugs who engaged in that violence and throw their asses in prison.”
Meanwhile, Cincinnati Councilwoman Victoria Parks went viral Wednesday afternoon following a Facebook comment in which she claimed the victims “begged for that beatdown” and that she was “grateful for the whole story.”
A city council spokesperson told The Christian Post on Wednesday that their office did “not have any information” regarding Parks and declined to comment on any pending federal investigation.
While it’s unclear whether the attack will be prosecuted as a hate crime, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the DOJ, Harmeet Dhillon, said the department “will monitor closely how local authorities handle this attack.”
“Nobody in our great nation should be the victim of such a crime, and where race is a motivation, federal law may apply,” Dhillon said in an X post on Sunday.
