A Washington man lies unconscious in the intensive care unit fighting a traumatic brain injury after a woman’s brother brutally beat him with an aluminum bat and said, “This is what happens when you bring black people around here.”
According to the Seattle Times, 26-year-old DaShawn Horne went out to a Seattle club during a rare Friday night off from his job as a postal handler. At the nightclub, he met a woman in her 20s who happened to not be black (I like when people say someone “happened to be” something, as if the woman stumbled across a bag filled with Taylor Swift songs and racism).
At the end of the night, the Becky-by-happenstance invited Horne back to her home for an evening of what I assume was a “nightcap.” (I admittedly don’t know what a “nightcap” is, but I’ve always wanted to be invited over for a “nightcap.” During my formative years, I assumed it was a bonnet that protected finger waves and wrap hairdos.) The next morning, the nightcap offerer called a Lyft to pick Horne up and take him home.
But when the Lyft driver arrived at the Auburn, Wash., home, the brother—who happened to be a Pacific Islander—of the coincidentally nonblack woman approached the man who just happened to be a Lyft driver with a bat and asked who the Lyft driver happened to be there to pick up. The driver gave the bat-wielding brother the name of the sister whose back just happened to have been recently blown out, and that’s when things descended into something that just happened to be reminiscent of a lynching.
The court papers say the driver heard “a thump sound like a bat had struck something,” and saw Julian Tuimauga, who happened to be 18, hit Horne in the head with an object that happened to be an aluminum bat.
While Horne lay bleeding, Tuimauga videotaped his victim and repeatedly used the n-word and said, “This is what happens when you bring black people around here.” The accused man later told police he was in a rage because he thought that his sister had sex with a black man.
Tuimauga was charged last week with first-degree assault and malicious harassment—the state’s hate crime statute—and remains in the King County Jail on $500,000 bail. Becky With the Bad Brother and her father, who also happened to be home, both say they were inside and did not witness the attack.
DaShawn Horne remains at Harborview Medical Center after doctors removed part of his brain to relieve swelling and performed surgery on his trachea. His family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with lost wages and hospital bills.
“As hard as this is, I forgive the young man who did this. But I won’t forget,” said DaShawn’s mother, LaDonna Horne. “Vengeance is for the Lord. It’s in God’s hands, and so is my son.”
Apparently, LaDonna Horne is not like Julian Tuimauga, who just happens to be evil.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that the sister and brother in the story are white, which happens to be wrong. The author apologizes profusely to any white person who may have been injured by this assumption.