As Russell Courtier smashed the head of 19-year-old Larnell Bruce into the front window of a convenience store in Oregon and later ran him over with his car, his partner, Colleen Hunt yelled, “Get him, baby!” and other words of encouragement.
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Bruce was with a group of friends outside a 7-Eleven convenience store in Gresham, near Portland, when Courtier and Hunt drove up in a red Jeep and a fight broke out as soon as Courtier got out of his car, the Portland Mercury said Wednesday.
The newspaper reported that security footage showed that within seconds of exchanging words, Courtier was seen banging Bruce’s head against the front window of the 7-Eleven, prompting the teenager to pull out a knife to defend himself.
When the known white supremacist saw the knife, Courtier went back to his car, and with encouragement from Hunt, he chased the teenager, hitting him with the front of his car. The incident took place on Aug. 10, according to the news report.
The clerk at the convenience store called the police as soon as the fight broke out and when they arrived, police found Bruce lying on the ground bleeding from his ears and head. He died a few days later as a result of the serious brain injuries.
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Courtier and Hunt were later arrested by the police and admitted to hitting Bruce with their car. They were indicted by a grand jury for murder on Aug. 18.
The Portland Mercury reported that Courtier spent most of his adult life in jail, including time in a federal prison where he became a gang leader with the white supremacist group European Kindred, EK.
The newspaper said that his prison records show that he was deeply involved in the EK for more than 15 years. At the time of the attack on Bruce, Courtier was on parole for a 2013 knife attack on a woman.
The killing of the Black teenager comes as white supremacists are finding a voice in Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump who has arguably emboldened neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan violence around the country.
“I can't quite put my finger on where we are heading as a nation, but it's not good. I know that much,” Shaun King, journalists at the New York Daily News, concluded in a column reporting on the incident.