Another one of the white men who brutally beat a young black man in a Charlottesville, Virginia, parking garage after the Unite the Right rally in August 2017 was found guilty Friday.
Tyler Watkins Davis, a 50-year-old from Middleberg, Florida, is the fourth man to be found guilty for taking part in the violent attack on 20-year-old DeAndre Harris, breaking his wrist, chipping his tooth, and causing a spinal injury and head laceration that required staples. Davis entered an Alford plea in a local Charlottesville court, meaning he agrees that there’s enough evidence to convict him of a malicious wounding charge but believes the charge is too severe, according to a local NBC affiliate.
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Davis was responsible for dealing the blow that required Harris to get staples, according to the Washington Post, and Davis was shown in a video hitting Harris with a stick. He was also a part of the white nationalist group the League of the South, the Post reported — considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
He was released on bond until his sentencing, set for August in Charlottesville.
Several others have already been sentenced in the incident: In January, Daniel Borden, a 20-year-old from Ohio, was ordered to serve three years and 10 months for his part in the beating. He was shown on video wearing a white construction helmet labeled “Commie Killer” and beating Harris with a wooden pole. And in August, Jacob Scott Goodwin, a 24-year-old from Arkansas, and Alex Michael Ramos, a 34-year-old from Georgia, were sentenced to eight and six years, respectively, for charges relating to the beating.
They were all in Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally, where droves of white nationalists and alt-right sympathizers took to the streets of the college town chanting and marching with torches to a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. In the aftermath, local prosecutors have pursued and won at least seven convictions against the protesters. Most notably, James Fields Jr., the neo-Nazi who killed counterprotester Heather Heyer when he drove his car into a crowd, was sentenced to life in prison in December.
A video of the garage attack went viral soon after the deadly rally, helping activists to identify the men involved in the beating. The men argued they were acting in self-defense, according to the Washington Post, and claimed Harris hit a white nationalist in the head with a flashlight, despite video evidence showing otherwise. There are more men wanted, still, for the garage attack, but authorities haven’t been able to find them, according to the Post.
Cover: In this Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017 photo, DeAndre Harris, bottom is assaulted in a parking garage beside the Charlottesville police station after a white nationalist rally was disbursed by police, in Charlottesville, Va. (Zach D. Roberts via AP)
