Members or supporters of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, identified by the Texas Observer and Bellingcat, appear to have perpetrated a possible hate crime at the location of a river tubing company. On June 22, a hot summer day, a group of 10 family members and friends were wrapping up a tubing trip on the San Marcos River at Don’s Fish Camp in the Central Texas town of Martindale when they were violently attacked by members or supporters of a neo-Nazi prison gang, according to eyewitness videos, interviews with victims, and publicly available records, photos, and other information. The group of family and friends included three members who were not white, according to interviews, and they were there to celebrate a birthday—something they had done many times in the past. The physical attack apparently began, video shows, after a brief verbal altercation. Several of the victims, who requested not to be named due to serious safety concerns, said that at least one member of the neo-Nazi group referred to a mixed-race teenager, the son of the woman whose birthday was being celebrated, as “Tarzan” after he went to use a rope swing, which the victim group understood as a racial epithet. (…) Members of the birthday group reported the incident to police, and local law enforcement from the Caldwell County Constable’s office arrived on the scene after the incident and arrested one person, Todd Jeremy Christian, a 45-year-old with an Austin address, on Class A misdemeanor charges for assault causing bodily injury, according to a police report the Observer obtained via a public information request. The report categorized the assault as a gang-related crime motivated by “Anti-Multi-Racial Group” bias. While only Christian was arrested, video evidence shows at least eight people were involved in the apparent assault on the group of family and friends. Of those eight, the Observer and Bellingcat have identified five—including Christian—as members or supporters of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT), a white supremacist prison gang founded in the 1980s that is unrelated to the original Aryan Brotherhood.
via texasobserver: NEO-NAZI GANG AFFILIATES ATTACKED A MIXED-RACE FAMILY IN MARTINDALE, ONLY ONE WAS ARRESTED