‘You could see the hatred look in their eyes’: Etowah County teen beating caught on surveillance
By Lisa Crane
Click here for updates on this story
RAINBOW CITY, Alabama (WVTM) — Warning: Some viewers may find the video above disturbing.
A teen was attacked by two teenagers in Etowah County, and it was caught on camera. Now, the victim’s mother is demanding justice.
It happened Friday night in Rainbow City.
Jacob Turner said it all started when a group of boys he didn’t know seemed to have a problem with him and his friend, who are both bi-racial, hanging out with a white teenage girl in a parking lot.
He said these boys, in two separate trucks, chased their vehicle through town until the victim hit a dead end. That’s when he got out of his car and ran to a family friend’s apartment to get help.
That’s where the Ring camera video picks up. It is a violent video showing the 16-year-old being chased and beaten by two teenagers.
It’s disturbing to watch, especially for Jacob’s mother.
Ashley Turner said, “I’m still devastated over it. I can’t … words don’t describe what you see. He’s such a good kid.”
Jacob said, “You could see the hatred look in their eyes. You know what their plans were. So, I just thought, just protect my head.”
Jacob was bruised and swollen after the attack but amazingly, he was OK. He was protecting his head because he has a cyst in his brain that has ruptured before.
“Doctors told me any type of contact to my head could cause it to rupture again, start bleeding again, and it could kill me,” he said.
Jacob’s mother has been in contact with Rainbow City police, but she’s frustrated because she says the boys responsible still haven’t been arrested. She also wants police to investigate the possibility that this was a hate crime.
She said, “The young man that was at the bottom of the steps went back to his school showing that video, bragging about what he did to my son, calling him the n-word. So how is that not racially motivated?”
Jacob said, “I was raised up in a mixed household. So, some of my friends were Black and some of my friends were white. It was never like a race thing to me. Now, this was an eye-opening situation where there’s a lot more race things going on and now it’s starting to affect me. And it was surreal, is what it was.”
Rainbow City police said because this case involves juveniles, they cannot release any information, but they are investigating.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
