Chair-swinging combatant in Alabama riverfront brawl surrenders to police
A Black man accused of bashing white boaters with a folding chair during a wild melee on an Alabama boating dock surrendered to police Friday afternoon.
Reggie Ray, 42, was wanted in connection to some widely viewed videos that surfaced over the weekend showing several white people attacking Black dockworker Damien Pickett, who had asked them to move their pontoon boat from the space reserved for a commercial riverboat.
In one of the videos, Ray — who was not part of the initial fight but joined in later as the brawl grew — can be seen swinging a folding chair and bashing several people over the head. He has now been charged with disorderly conduct and is being held at Montgomery’s Municipal Jail.
Ray is the fifth person charged in the ongoing investigation. Those who instigated the fight — pontoon boat passengers Allen Todd, 23; Zachery “Chase” Shipman, 25; Richard Roberts, 48; and Mary Todd, 21 — have each been charged with misdemeanor assault for their alleged roles in last weekend’s violence.
Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said Friday that “the FBI has not classified these attacks as a hate crime, but the investigation is ongoing.”
“From what we’ve seen from the history of our city — a place tied to both the pain and the progress of this nation — it seems to meet the moral definition of a crime fueled by hate,” he added, according to AL.com.
Harriott II riverboat Capt. Jim Kittrell told The Daily Beast he believes race was an issue in the violence against Pickett, who he said was attacked after he tried moving the docked pontoon boat a few feet so the riverboat could park in its designated spot.
“I can’t think of any other reason they attacked him other than it being racially motivated,” Kittrell said.
Police say they’ve found no evidence the fight was driven by race, though one witness claimed to have heard a racist slur, according to CNN.
The pontoon boat passengers, who were visiting from out of town, reportedly ignored several requests to move their craft so that the riverboat and its 227 passengers could disembark. The crew of the Harriett II reportedly waited 45 minutes before Pickett was dispatched to move the pontoon a few feet so the larger vessel could dock.
