Rochester New York police are characterizing the brazen attack of an elderly woman as harassment rather than what it appears to be — another example of the hotly-debated “knockout game.”
The attacker, a young black male who operated a Facebook account under the name “True Goon Tocool Sneekey”, narrated his plan for the camera.
“True Goon”, who according to his now-deleted Facebook account attends John Marshall High School in Rochester, grabbed a snowball from the ground saying, “I’m about to smack the old lady with the snowball when she come out the store.”
“True Goon” proceeded to dance and shimmy for the camera as his friends laughed.
“This is the skinny bop,” he said as the woman emerged from the store.
But the teen didn’t use the snowball. Instead, “True Goon” slung a left-handed haymaker into the woman’s face. After the vicious hit, the woman, looking bewildered, grabbed the side of her head. She remained standing though, meaning that “True Goon” did not win that day’s Knockout Game.
“Smack cam!” screamed the videographer five times after the punch was landed.
The young men scrambled away from the scene. “Oh shit, let me get the fuck out of here,” said the young man controlling the camera. “She gonna call the cops,” he said in a celebratory rather than a fearful tone.
The blogger who reported the attack, a man from Rochester named Davy Vara, asked the person who tipped him off about the Facebook video to record it from a computer screen. The video was later deleted from the Facebook account and “True Goon Tocool Sneekey’s” Facebook account has disappeared, but not before information and pictures of the young man were captured by screenshot.
Despite the obvious assault, Rochester police spokeswoman Sgt. Elena Correia said that the incident “is more likely an example of a harassment than an assault,” reported The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.
Correia told The Democrat & Chronicle that the attack did not seem to resemble the “Knockout Game” but that she agreed that the video was disturbing.
The Daily Caller News Foundation followed up with Correia. “At this time there are no updates,” she said.
“Based on the video itself and on New York penal law, it constitutes harassment.”
TheDCNF asked Correia if investigators saw that “True Goon” had hit the woman with his fist.
“Yes, we saw that,” she said, but clarified that an assault charge would require the victim to suffer “substantial pain”.
A debate has raged about whether or not the large number of random, vicious attacks fall into the “Knockout Game” genre. Most of the perpetrators of the incidents are young black males. The victims are often white. These patterns have have added further debate to not only whether or not “knockout game” is a trend, but also if young black males tend to be perpetrators of the attacks.
Awareness of the trend most recently picked up steam after numerous reports that Jewish people in New York City were being attacked at random.
Recently, a 35 year-old man named Barry Baldwin was arrested and charged with a hate crime for committing seven attacks on Jewish women.
Not all of the attacks have involved black attackers and white victims. Late last month, Conrad Barrett, a 27 year-old white man from Texas, punched and broke the jaw of a 79 year-old black man. Barrett had spoken openly about his intention to carry out a racist ‘knockout game’ attack.
(h/t Davy Vara)
