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Source: St. James Parish Sheriff's Office, Facebook
Though an arrest has been made, police say there’s evidence lacking of a racial motive.
St. James Parish Sheriff's Office arrested a white man in connection to an incident at an annual Christmas Eve bonfire event in Gramercy where two black teenagers who were beaten and hospitalized.
Jordan Hitt, 21, was arrested Dec. 28 and charged with aggravated second-degree battery. Hitt is currently awaiting a bond hearing at St. James Parish Jail in Convent.
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La'Quesha Scott, the mother of one of the victims, posted a statement on Facebook saying her 15-year-old son, Sam Scott, was attacked by a group of four or five white men after a white girl began talking to them at the bonfire. The other victim is her son's 17-year-old cousin, Shannon Dumas.
One of the boys maintained severe injuries around his eyes, cheeks, scalp, and what appears to be a split earlobe, while the other reportedly ended up with 17 stitches. Scott claims her nephew had been hit with a Crown Royal bottle several times and knocked unconscious.
Neither parent was present at the site of the incident but say their sons have the same account of what transpired.
"A white girl started talking to one of my black friends and they were running it with each other and she had a boyfriend and her boyfriend got mad," Shannon Dumas told Fox 8 Live.
From there, Shannon Dumas says the conversation escalated and more people gathered around.
"And I asked him if he wanted to fight and he said, 'Yeah,' so he was like yeah, so I took my jacket off and when I took my jacket off, somebody hit me with a bottle and I fell and they hit me again and I fell again and they started jumping me," Dumas added.
The cousins claim they did not throw the first punches and that five or six white teenagers surrounded them and attacked.
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St. James Parish Sheriff Willy Martin said investigators have not found evidence of a racial motive for the fight so far.
"I don't see anything that supports it's a racial/hate crime," Martin said in an interview shortly before the announcement of Hitt’s arrest. "Prior to the fight, they were all up there having a nice time...We all know it was a fight between young black men and young white men, but we don't know if it's over hate. We have not determined the motive of this fight.”
"It feels like it's about to be a pushover and we're not going to let that go like that," Lahoma Dumas, the mother of the 17-year-old, told Fox 8 Live.
"Down here, to me, it's like when you're white, you're right," one of the mothers said. "I feel like if they would have done that to them, they would have been in jail the same night... All I want is justice."
Officials say the investigation is ongoing.
