Lee Mouat Jr., 42, was charged on Tuesday with the hate crime of “willfully causing bodily injury to an African-American teenager because of the teenager’s race.” On June 6, Mouat reportedly attacked 18-year-old Devin Freelon, a high school student at the time, in an incident that took place in a parking lot at Sterling State Park, south of Detroit, Michigan. Mouat was already facing state felony charges of assault of ethnic intimidation. According The New York Times, the new hate crime charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
NBC reports that Mouat confronted a group of Black teenagers in the parking lot, saying he would “bash their heads” if they did not lower the volume of music they were playing. A witness says Mouat “repeatedly” used the “N-word,” and remarked that “Black Lives don’t matter” while continuously claiming that the beach was his as he argued with the teens. However, things escalated further when Mouat went back to his vehicle, grabbed a bicycle chain lock, and hit Freelon in the face with it.
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At the time of the incident, Click on Detroit reported that Freelon suffered a broken jaw as well as losing “several teeth” in the attack. At the time, the Detroit Free Press reported that Dr. Nawras Najor provided Freelon with free dental work to fix his smile before his graduation from Orchard Center High School.