Lee Mouat

Source: Monroe County Sheriff’s Office

A white supremacist has pleaded guilty to beating a Black teen in his mouth with a bicycle lock stemming from a racist encounter at a Michigan beach last June. Lee Mouat, a 43-year-old white man, admitted he carried out the violent crime specifically because the teenager — Devin Freelon Jr. — was Back.

Mouat’s guilty plea comes as hate crimes across the country have been growing.

USA Today reported that Mouat pleaded guilty this Wednesday. Mouat now faces up to 10 years in prison.

NewsOne previously reported that Mouat was charged by federal prosecutors with a hate crime for “willfully causing bodily injury to an African-American teenager because of the teenager’s race.” But the devil was in the details as Mouat was also accused of repeatedly calling a group of Black teens the N-word before retrieving a bike lock from his car and using it to hit Freelon, 18, in the face, breaking his jaw and knocking out several teeth. All because they allegedly would not turn down the music they were playing on a portable speaker.

The criminal complaint claimed that Mouat confronted Freelon Jr. and two of his friends in a parking lot at Sterling State Park in Monroe County.

After telling them, “Black lives don’t matter,” Mouat set out to prove himself right.

“Niggers don’t belong on this beach,” the complaint claims Mouat said. “While [Freelon] retrieved a portable speaker from a vehicle, MOAUT yelled racial slurs at [his] two friends, who were also African American teenagers. As [Freelon] walked over to his friends with the portable speaker, he noticed MOAUT walking quickly towards him. MOUAT swung an object, which struck [Freelon] in the face.”

One witness, claiming Mouat’s racist violence was premeditated, said he was angry at the Black teens before confronting them. The witness claims Mouat said “these niggers are playing gang music” and “I want to hit them with this cooler.” The complaint also says the witness claimed Mouat called them “niggers” and “monsters” and added that “I wish someone would say something to me so I can beat them.”

This week, “Mouat admitted that he repeatedly hurled racial slurs at the group and said that Black people had no right to use the public beach,” USA Today reported.

Mouat is scheduled to be sentenced on June 24 and could also be forced to pay a fine of $250,000.

Mouat’s guilty plea came on the same day that the NYPD arrested a Black man for violently attacking an elderly Asian woman because of her race. Brandon Elliot, 38, was arrested and hit with numerous charges including assault as a hate crime and attempted assault as a hate crime.

Elliot’s arrest follows a deadly shooting spree in Georgia that targeted three different Asian spas. Robert Aaron Long killed eight people, including six Asian women. The police have insisted the killings were motivated by Long’s purported sex addiction, but civil rights groups have refused to discount how much the victims’ race factored.

Also last month, a white man who killed two Black shoppers at a Kentucky Kroger plead guilty to federal hate crime and firearm charges. The Oct. 2018 shooting by Gregory Bush claimed the lives of Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, when Bush opened fire at the grocery store located in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

SEE ALSO:

Man Arrested In Violent Attack Of Asian Woman Was On Parole For Killing His Mom

Kroger Shooter Could Face Second Life Sentence After Pleading Guilty To Federal Hate Crime Charges

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