Mark Hall was arrested Tuesday July 26 on nine counts of simple assault and one count of attempted by physical menace to create fear.
A video of a man speeding in a neighborhood with a group of black children riding their bikes has gone viral. The video captures the 49 year old man yelling racial slurs like “Aw hell 50 points”.
The video was posted on July 24 to Snapchat but someone screen recorded it and put it on Facebook. In the video you can see the black children swerving out the way so they wouldn’t get hit as Hall yells “Stupid N****r”.
Tuesday morning the parents of the kids seen in the video gathered at the Ripley police department demanding Hall be arrested.
“He could have hurt those guys. He could have killed somebody or anything, but he had no regard for those black lives that were out there,” Clarence Holmes, a parent of a child in the video told FOX13. “We are living in a time that is supposed to be progressive. We are supposed to be progressive people, but we are still dealing with the same things that we were dealing with back when my grandparents and great grandparents were around”.
“I don’t think it was right because we weren’t harming anybody. We were just riding around town and getting some exercise on our off day from sports to stay in shape for school,” Curt Cohea, 16, one of the boys in the video said.
“It wasn’t right, we are just trying to go around and be kids and ride our bikes around the neighborhood and be together and its sad that people will try to take your fun from you,” Jakai Holmes, another teen in the video said.
Authorities are investigating this incident and Hall could be charged with a hate crime.
He is being held on a $45,000 bond.
