BOSTON (AP) — A Black teacher and musician told a federal court Thursday that members of a white nationalist hate group punched, kicked and beat him with metal shields during a march through downtown Boston two years ago.
Charles Murrell III, of Boston, was in federal court Thursday to testify in his lawsuit asking for an undisclosed amount of money from the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau.
“I thought I was going to die,” Murrell said, according to The Boston Globe.
The newspaper said that U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani last year found the group and Rousseau, of Grapevine, Texas, liable for the attack after Rousseau didn’t respond to a civil lawsuit Murrell filed. Talwani will issue a ruling after the hearing from Murrell and several other witnesses.
Murrell was in the area of the Boston Public Library to play his saxophone on July 2, 2022, when he was surrounded by members of the Patriot Front and assaulted in a “coordinated, brutal, and racially motivated attack,” according to his lawsuit.
A witness, who The Boston Globe said testified at the hearing, recalled how the group “were ganging up” on Murrell and “pushing him violently with their shields.”
Murrell was taken by ambulance to the hospital for treatment of lacerations, some of which required stitches, the suit says. No one has been charged in the incident.
Attorney Jason Lee Van Dyke, who has represented the group in the past, said last year that Murrell was not telling the truth and that he was the aggressor.
Murrell, who has a background teaching special education, told The Associated Press last year that the lawsuit is about holding Patriot Front accountable, helping his own healing process and preventing anything similar from happening to children of color, like those he teaches.
The march in Boston by about 100 members of the Texas-based Patriot Front was one of its so-called flash demonstrations it holds around the country. In addition to shields, the group carried a banner that said “Reclaim America” as they marched along the Freedom Trail and past some of the city’s most famous landmarks.
They were largely dressed alike in khaki pants, dark shirts, hats, sunglasses and face coverings.
Murrell said he had never heard of the group before the confrontation but believes he was targeted because of the tone of their voices and the slurs they used when he encountered them.