A St. Cloud, Minn., couple is facing multiple charges after they allegedly assaulted a black man, hurled racial slurs at him and then threatened to run him over with their truck.
The brutal attack occurred on Monday when the man went to the home of Aaron Charles Stevens to pick up a fan. Stevens then apparently started attacking him, coming out of his home and yelling at the man to get off of his property, calling him racial slurs, including “nigger” and hurling other verbal abuses, KNSI Radio reports.
Stevens, 58, allegedly broke a beer bottle and threw it at the man, striking the unidentified victim in the face and cutting him. He also charged at the victim with a large tie strap with metal hooks.
The man acknowledged that he grabbed a hammer hoping to defend himself, but was hit in the face by the metal hooks.
As the two continued to scuffle, Stevens pinned the man on the ground before calling for his girlfriend, 41-year-old Myrna Angelica Alanis, to run the man over with their truck.
Witnesses claim that Alanis backed up the truck and revved the engine as the man was on the ground.
Eventually, the man managed to escape, even as Stevens chased after him with an ax.
To top this all off, Stevens is all loud and proud in his racism, admitting to police that he did attack the man, called him names and held him down as the truck approached his head. Stevens also told police that he’s prejudiced and uses the word nigger to describe people.
Which leaves me puzzled about his relationship with Alanis, both on his part and especially on her part because...[looks at that mugshot].
Speaking of Alanis, she also readily admitted to almost hitting the man with the vehicle, although later she claimed that she was just revving the engine.
Stevens is facing charges of three counts of second-degree assault with a weapon, with his bond set at $300,000, while Alanis is being charged with one count of second-degree assault and being held on $100,000 bond.
“We are taking into consideration the race-motivated aspect of this crime with respect to sentencing,” Assistant Stearns County Attorney Kyle Triggs said Wednesday, according to the St. Cloud Times. “That could play a role in increasing the sentencing, dependent on the court and the jury.”
However, as the Times notes, assaults motivated by any sort of bias fall under fourth-degree assault, which means up to a year imprisonment and a $3,000 fine; it is basically a gross misdemeanor.
“Ironically, if we instead went with the fourth-degree bias assault (charge) it would be less of a punishment than the charges we filed,” Triggs said.