Mar 19, 2008 7:00 pm US/Central
FBI Investigating Hate Crime Committed Outside Bar
(WCCO)
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Troy Brazelton, 39, who is black, just emerged from a coma two weeks after he was severely beaten by a white man.
CBS
The FBI is investigating whether a hate crime was committed outside a Fridley bar.
Troy Brazelton, 39, who is black, just emerged from a coma two weeks after he was severely beaten by a white man.
It all started with a game of pool and ended with Brazelton lying unconscious bleeding in a parking lot.
"He
has just a wonderful spirit. The kindest, gentlest person you'd ever
want to meet," said Brazelton's aunt Yvonne Brazelton-Singleton.
Brazelton was a regular at Two Stooges Bar And Grill in Fridley, Minn.
Like other loyal pool players, he felt comfortable there.
"Perfectly safe ... and the people are just full of integrity," said bar regular Jeri Engh.
"I've never had a problem with nobody here," said bar regular Eddie Proctor.
So what happened to Brazelton this month took them by surprise.
"I couldn't believe .. that someone would do that to someone else and ... that (something like) that happened here," said Engh.
"It was kind of a shock," said Proctor.
Investigators and witnesses said Brazelton was playing pool when a group of white men started hurling racial slurs at him.
"So they went to the management ... and management made this other group leave," said Brazelton-Singleton.
A short time later Brazelton went out the door to smoke a cigarette and he was attacked in the parking lot.
Witnesses said he was then dragged through the parking lot and left between two cars.
"My
nephew has suffered so much trauma -- trauma to his brain, rib broken,
he had internal bleeding, a host of other things," said Brazelton-Singleton.
Thomas Scott Cretilli, 25, is charged with assault and faces possible federal hate crime charges.
"At
first of course you're outraged," said Brazelton-Singleton. "You kind
of hope in your mind that this kind of thing is done with, it's over,
but as we can see ... it's not."
The alleged attacker told police he was calling one of his buddies the n-word in the bar, not Brazelton.
He
said when Troy came out of the bar he felt threatened by him -- even
though Troy didn't have a weapon and never touched him physically in
any way.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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