The three White men charged with assault Tuesday after they attacked a Black riverboat co-captain in Montgomery, Ala., and ignited a brawl largely along racial lines had previously caused problems for the Harriott II, the vessel’s captain said, and were repeatedly asked to move their pontoon boat so the riverboat could dock.
Harriott II captain Jim Kittrell told media outlets he believed the attack on co-captain Damien Pickett over the weekend was “racially motivated.”
Richard Roberts, 48; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25, were charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault in the attack on Pickett at a dock in Riverfront Park, Montgomery Police Chief Darryl J. Albert said at a news conference.
All three turned themselves in, Montgomery Police Maj. Saba Coleman told The Washington Post. She added that Roberts also has a warrant pending for striking a 16-year-old White boy, and that Reggie Gray, a 42-year-old Black man who was seen on video hitting people with a folding chair during the brawl, has not turned himself in after police called on him to do so.
Authorities said that they had consulted with the FBI and would not be able to charge the White men with a hate crime or with inciting a riot. But Kittrell, who told WACV in Montgomery that riverboat staff previously “had trouble” with the boaters from Selma, Ala., emphasized that he believed the assault on Pickett, 43, was due to racism.
Advertisement
“The White guys that attacked my deckhand — and he was a senior deckhand first mate — I can’t think of any other reason they attacked him other than it being racially motivated,” Kittrell, who is White, told the Daily Beast on Tuesday. “All he 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.”
He added to radio show “News & Views with Joey Clark” that the brawl after the initial assault of Pickett “was not a Black-and-White thing.”
Neither Pickett nor Kittrell, 62, immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday morning.
Albert announced the charges against Roberts, Todd and Shipman three days after videos went viral of the brawl, which was decried by Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed (D) as “an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred.”
Advertisement
“This is not indicative of who we are,” said Reed, Montgomery’s first Black mayor. On Wednesday, Reed criticized Todd and Shipman after they “did not honor their agreement to surrender to authorities,” and said that police “will do what it takes to bring them to justice.”
Videos taken by onlookers and spread around the internet showed the Black co-captain, Pickett, arguing with one of the pontoon boaters on Saturday as a second White man charges at Pickett and hits him in the face. Pickett then tosses his cap into the air before the two hit each other. Almost immediately, Pickett is swarmed by several White men on the dock who throw punches while the Black man was on the ground, according to the videos posted online.
White and Black people on the dock and shore appear to jump in to try to help Pickett, and someone appears to jump off the riverboat and swim to the dock to help the co-captain. As the initial tussle calmed down, videos appeared to show a group of Black men confronting the White boaters. That fighting lasted more than a minute, with one of the Black men — allegedly Gray — being recorded hitting a White woman in the head with a folding chair and then being surrounded by police. One person seemed to get punched off the dock into the water.
Police detained 13 people for questioning, then released them, Albert said. The police chief said that “no stone was unturned” in deciding ultimately to not charge Roberts, Todd and Shipman with more serious charges.
Share this articleShare“We examined this over a period of time, not only that night but since that night,” he told reporters. “At this time, based on the way the statutes read the laws are crafted, we were unable to present any inciting a riot or racially-biased charges.”
Kittrell has captained the Harriott II for about 13 years, steering the riverboat since it was originally known as Savannah River Queen of Savannah, Ga., according to the Selma Times-Journal. He told the Daily Beast he’s known Pickett for about 10 years during their time together on the Harriott II, a 19th-century riverboat offering dinner, dancing and live entertainment as part of Montgomery’s popular Riverfront Park.
Advertisement
The riverboat captain said this week that the three White men were part of a group of pontoon boaters from Selma that he’s had issues with in recent years.
“We’ve had trouble with them in the past, but just like jokey things,” he said Monday to the Montgomery radio station.
He pointed to an instance a couple of years ago when one of the riverboat’s golf carts was missing after returning from a cruise. Kittrell said the group had taken it and left it in an odd place: the lobby of a Hampton Inn.
“We looked at the Hampton Inn video, found out who did it, and we had them come down,” the riverboat captain told the radio station. “We were going to press charges then, but the police talked us out of it.”
But what unfolded Saturday was different, he said. When Kittrell noticed the pontoon boat was partially blocking the area where the riverboat docks, he asked the pontoon boat’s passengers over the PA system to move the boat “about five times,” he recalled. After he threatened to call the police on the boaters, “they started shooting birds at us,” which led him to call law enforcement, Kittrell told the radio station.
Advertisement
“I was nice as a peach when I was talking to them at first: ‘Please, help me out here, fellas. Move the boat up a little bit,’” he told the Daily Beast.
Not long after Pickett attempted to push the pontoon boat forward a few feet, Kittrell saw his colleague get attacked by the men from Selma.
“We’re 40 yards or 30 yards away from the dock watching all of this. There’s nothing we can do,” he said to the radio station. “About that time, another guy comes running up. And within a minute or so, it was an all-out brawl. And then I saw some more guys coming, and I said, ‘Oh. Thank God. They’re going to break it up.’ But instead of breaking it up, they jumped on him too. So, at one time, it was like six, seven guys on my deckhand that was trying to move the boat.”
While Kittrell maintained that the attack on Pickett was racially motivated, he emphasized that the rest of the brawl, which appeared to be along racial lines, was not the same as the initial encounter. He said he was thankful for the Harriott II staff for standing up and coming to Pickett’s aid during the attack.
“It was just shipmates trying to help a shipmate. They could’ve been little green men, for all they cared,” he told the Daily Beast. “When they attacked Damien, my crew was gonna jump out and do the best they could to help him out. It was my crew against the people who attacked their shipmate, that’s all it was.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLuiwMiopWhqYGeAcHyXaGdyZ52ku7Wzzqacq7FdlrmirsCmmGaqmauys67OmqtmmqKWxK15wpqnrZmZo3w%3D