Montgomery Police Chief Darryl J. Albert says that third-degree assault charges have been levied against two men who were connected to Saturday’s riverfront brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, which was prompted by an attack against a Black senior deckhand.
Police say that as of Wednesday night, 23-year-old Allen Todd and 25-year-old Zachary Shipman both turned themselves in and “are in custody…A third man was also charged with two counts of third-degree assault in connection with the melee…and had turned himself in earlier,” CNN reports.
Video footage of the melee went viral over the weekend, after Captain Jim Kittrell and senior deckhand Damien Pickett, who is Black, tried to move a pontoon that was blocking space reserved for their riverboat, the Harriott II.
Since then, one eyewitness has come forward and alleged that one of the instigators used a racial slur. In a sworn statement, one of the victim’s mothers told authorities, “you could hear men yelling ‘f**k that n***er’.”
Despite these allegations, Albert and his department still believe “the brawl was not racially motivated.”
Capt. Kittrell believes it was. As he told Daily Beast, “All [Pickett] did was move their boat up three feet. It makes no sense to have six people try to beat the snot out of you just because you moved their boat up a few feet. In my opinion, the attack on Damien was racially motivated.”
At a press conference on Tuesday, Albert initially said that authorities were investigating if “there was enough evidence to charge for a hate crime or inciting a riot, but the actions did not meet the criteria.” However, Albert later added the caveat that authorities possessed the ability to “amend changes as necessary” per their findings from the investigation.
Albert explained, “At the time, we did not have the luxury of all the videos that we have seen now, that you and I have seen, and that the world has seen. Basically all we had were witness statements and he-said, she-said so our police officers and detectives had to decipher through all that and then apply the appropriate charges at that time…So again, as we gain more information, as we get more video, as we talk to more individuals, if charges are meant to be amended, they will be.”
Albert recognizes that Montgomery is the “birthplace of civil rights…We know how contentious this was back in the 60s, the 50s, the 70s. We don’t want to go back to that and we’re not going to go back to that. We are going to make sure we’re going to get it right the first time, so it’s going to be a slow and methodical process to ensure justice for all.”
Thus far, 13 people have been detained, questioned, and subsequently released, in connection with the August 5 Montgomery riverfront brawl. “I don’t think we’re near finished…We have a lot more work to do on this,” said the police chief.
“We have hundreds of videos and witness statements at this time and, I would say at this point it is highly likely that more arrests and more individuals will face charges,” continued Albert.