Hip-Hop Artist: Charlottesville Cops Didn't Stop Beating

'They were trying to kill me out there'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 14, 2017 3:33 AM CDT
Hip-Hop Artist Says Cops Didn't Stop Virginia Beating
In this Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017 photo, DeAndre Harris, bottom is assaulted in a parking garage beside the Charlottesville police station after a white nationalist rally was disbursed by police, in Charlottesville, Va.   (Zach D. Roberts via AP)

A hip-hop artist badly beaten during Saturday's unrest in Charlottesville says he's lucky to be alive—especially since police saw the attack and failed to act. De'Andre Harris tells the Los Angeles Times that around five white nationalist marchers singled him out from other counter-protesters and chased him into a parking garage, where they beat him with poles. The garage was near the city's police department, and Harris says a group of officers yards away did not try to stop the violence. "They were trying to kill me out there," Harris says. "The police didn’t budge, and I was getting beat to a pulp." Harris, who is black, says he had written anti-KKK and anti-police messages on a towel around his neck.

Harris, a 20-year-old Charlottesville resident who works as an assistant special education teacher, says he needed eight staples in his head after the attack and also has a broken wrist and a chipped tooth. He says he was saved by friends who came to his aid. Photographer Zach D. Roberts says one police officer also eventually helped, preventing attackers from following Harris into a stairwell. Harris says his mother is considering a lawsuit—and he still doesn't understand why the rally was allowed to take place. "I think for them to be allowed to come here and protest is really crazy. How do you expect the KKK to come to your city to protest, and them not be violent?" he tells the Root. (More Charlottesville, Va. stories.)

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