John Hamasaki, the attorney for Musgrove, says she was in San Francisco checking out massage therapy schools. "She's never been arrested, never been in trouble, she's not one of these people that society needs to be worried about."
A third suspect, anarchist theorist Andre Grubacic, a
34-year-old white San Francisco resident, was detained but released at
the scene after the victims said he wasn't part of attack. (The more common spelling of Grubacic's first name is Andrej.) A fourth suspect, an unknown white male,
pedaled away on a bicycle before the cops could catch him.
Plainclothes
and uniformed police officers saw the group of attackers follow the national
anarchists, who had broken off from the counter-demonstration around 3:15
p.m. Saturday. The group turned a corner around Polk and Van Ness, putting them out of the officers' line of sight at the beginning of the physical attack. When police caught up with the brawl, they saw that the victims "tried
to defend themselves," said SFPD spokesperson Lyn Tomioka.
Cops
recovered what they believe to be a mace can at the scene. The robbery
charge stemmed from an attempt to take a backpack from one of the victims.
The victim group -- who was unidentified on the police report, but were
identified to SF Weekly as BANA members by founder Andrew Yeoman -- were
treated by paramedics at the scene but refused further medical
assistance. One victim had bruising and redness to the left side of the
face; one had head, neck and back injuries; one had a cut on the right
side of the face and a red eye; and the fourth had no apparent injury.
None of the injuries were life-threatening.
Yeoman, who has been penning credos about his anti-immigration views on extreme
right websites, claims the attackers were Antifa, or anti-Fascists. Meanwhile
someone calling themselves "antifa" has posted
an article on the attack on indybay entitled "Stop the Bay Area
National Anarchists!": "There is no place in the Bay area (or anywhere)
for this fascist scum,
no matter how they try to package themselves."
UPDATE At 4:30 p.m., 5/3: John Hamasaki, a private defense attorney who is representing Kelsey Musgrove pro bono, disputes Yeoman's earlier account of the fight. After talking to witnesses of the fight, Hamasaki says "It was the BANA people who had a baton, and one of them had brass knuckles and tried to blame it on the other kids." He says Musgrove "was struck first, she didn't instigate any fights. I've heard that from more than one person." He says the one witness says a BANA member had yelled before the scuffle: "This is my city and I'm taking it back for the white people."
Hamasaki says his client is still in jail awaiting arraignment, but expects the felony charges to be lowered to misdemeanors.
To clarify, police spokeswoman Lyn Tomioka said the police didn't recover any brass knuckles at the scene.
