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Family Members Of Chicago Torture Video Victim Speak Out

By Rahul Srinivas
Published on: 03:58 PST, Jan 6, 2017

One day after the horrific Chicago torture video that showed a mentally challenged teen held hostage and tortured went viral, the family members of the victim have come forward to tell their side of the story.

The horrific incident eventually led to the arrests of four people who were later identified as Brittany Covington, Tesfaye Cooper, Jordan Hill, and Tanishia Covington. All four suspects find themselves charged with a hate crime; felony aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

According to CNN, Hill, Cooper and Brittany Covington also face additional charges of residential burglary. Additionally, Hill also faces a standalone charge of possession of a stolen motor vehicle.

All the arrested teenagers are 18-years-old. In the now infamous video, a mentally challenged young white man is seen with his mouth taped shut lying in the corner of a room. The voices of people in the room taunting him could be heard in the background. Two people are seen in the video cutting off the teen’s sweatshirt. Another person is seen pushing the teenager’s head with his foot. A wound was also visible on the forehead of the victim. The video was reportedly live streamed by the individuals on Facebook. In the unedited footage of the video, the people could be heard abusing the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as well as white people in general.

“*F*ck Donald Trump!” one attacker shouted in the video. “F*ck white people!”

A second video was also uploaded to LiveLeak later.

In fact, at one point in the video, one of the female suspects sounds disillusioned over the fact that the live video wasn’t getting as much attention it deserved.

“Y’all not even commenting on my s***,” she tells a friend during the live stream.

She didn’t have to wait too long for the reactions, though. Within hours of the footage going online, it started going viral.

Following the outrage over the incident and the subsequent arrests of the perpetrators, the family members of the victim have come out with their views. The family issued a statement to the media in which they thanked everyone for their support. An excerpt from the statement read as follows.

“We’re so grateful for all the prayers and efforts that led to the safe return of our brother. We’re fully aware of the charges being brought against the offenders. At this time we ask for continued prayers for all those involved, for our family’s privacy as we cope and heal.”

Some of the family members confirmed that they did see the horrifying video hours after it went viral. However, they are now just happy that their loved one has returned to the safety of his home.

David Boyd, the brother-in-law of the victim further added the following.

“We appreciate all of the support from everyone. We haven’t spoken to anyone but each other. But, we’ve read what’s out there, and we really appreciate it. This should never have happened.”

According to Boyd, the 18-year-old victim disappeared from his home last weekend, and hours after he went missing, the family members received text messages from his captors who informed they that they were holding him hostage. In fact, Boyd says he even met up with one of the suspects at a McDonald’s to strike a deal for the victim’s release. Family members added that police were alerted about his missing status earlier this week on Monday. Boyd later confirmed that the victim is doing well now.

Meanwhile, Chicago Police officials initially said that the victim was probably singled because of his “special needs” and not because he was white. However, later they decided to press hate crime charges as racial slurs could be easily heard in the video.

Following the incident, several people have blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for fueling it. In fact, within a few hours of the incident, there were more than 480,000 instances of the hashtag #BKMKidnapping on Twitter. Police officials too, later confirmed that they did not find anything that linked the incident to Black Lives Matter movement.

[Featured image by Evan Vucci/ AP Images]

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