I live in Chapel Hill, NC, and until recently worked part time at a local grill and bar. We did very well, hitting a million dollars in sales annually. For the past two years, the owner had been increasingly listening to Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the like. He became fixated on the founding fathers, and could be heard muttering about how Obama "makes fun of our country" or how the "left didn't get it", among other things. During this descent into delusion, mixed in with the occasional tea-party rally, we all began to worry about other things from potential drug abuse to stealing money from the business. His actions were more and more erratic, as he spent less and less time at work and more time it seemed locked in this intractable, personal, and imaginary culture war in his head.
I live in Chapel Hill, NC, and until recently worked part time at a local grill and bar. We did very well, hitting a million dollars in sales annually. For the past two years, the owner had been increasingly listening to Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the like. He became fixated on the founding fathers, and could be heard muttering about how Obama "makes fun of our country" or how the "left didn't get it", among other things. During this descent into delusion, mixed in with the occasional tea-party rally, we all began to worry about other things from potential drug abuse to stealing money from the business. His actions were more and more erratic, as he spent less and less time at work and more time it seemed locked in this intractable, personal, and imaginary culture war in his head.
The last day we were open was in early December. We hold a Christmas party every year for the staff, where everyone goes to a bar and drinks for while on our store's tab, sort of a give-back to the employees for a year of physically demanding work keeping the place in gear and running smooth. During this celebration, multiple people noticed our tea-partying boss acting more strange and erratic than normal. We all just try to have a good time, and for the most part we do. Or at least we thought.
The next morning an employee gets a call from another one who had been at the party asking for a ride home from the hospital. No one knew what had happened so they went to the hospital to check him out. The problem is that when they did, the guy was still in extreme pain and clearly had something wrong with him. After 12 hours of keeping the guy in the hallway of the ER hooked to a fluids bag, they found the problem. He was suffering from a ruptured bladder, and the urine and blood had filled his abdominal cavity, coating and shutting down his intestines, and pushing on his diaphragm making it difficult to breathe. The whole time they had been treating him for alcohol poisoning, since there had been drinking, by giving him fluids, when in fact he had a life threatening internal injury. He was unable to urinate and when they finally inserted a catheter, they drained out 4 liters of blood and urine from the guy's abdomen. This isn't a big guy, mind you. He is roughly 120 lbs and 5' 6". Four liters is a lot for someone that size. After an emergency surgery and a week in the hospital he was finally released. His condition is improving, as he has more healing and rehab to do, and can not lift more than 10 lbs for six weeks.
No one knew what had happened to him. He said he didn't really know what happened, he just remembers going somewhere with the owner of our place and another employee, getting in an argument with the owner, followed by a little scuffle, then he woke up in the hospital. People thought maybe he had wandered out in the street or passed out and been hit by a car, a possibility echoed by our boss, who had been with him that night. Well, when the third person present was asked about it, he had quite a different story. As he was the only one sober, and his story seems to match up the best, we are inclined to believe what he said.
He described the three of them leaving our work party and heading back to our store to hang out and have a couple more drinks. By this time it was late at night, about 3 o'clock. Once there they were talking and the guy who had gotten injured started ribbing our boss about his tea party relationship. He basically told him to his face that he didn't like black or poor people. Everything happened quickly after that. These two guys were sitting at a high table across from the bar, and the other, sober witness was behind the bar listening and making the occasional drink. He said the next thing he knew, our boss had jumped up from his chair, grabbed the other guy by the neck and shoulders, lifted him up into the air, then viciously slammed him onto the brick floor. He then proceeded to crush the guy's neck with his knee, not letting up. It wasn't until the guy behind the bar jumped over it and rushed to help, pulling the boss off of the smaller guy he was attacking. I don't know if he was trying to kill him, but let's just say I'm glad the third guy was there to help. After everyone settled down, the guy who got attacked was asked to get out of the bar. He left, and no one saw nor heard from him for 20-plus minutes. Supposedly the next thing they heard was screaming from outside. They walked out there and saw the victim crawling around in a pool of his own blood and vomit screaming in pain. He had been out there in sub 20 degree weather dying. The third guy, the witness, suggested calling 911 four times to the boss before he was taken up on it. Once the cops and ambulance got there, our boss, the one who assaulted the other guy told them nothing of his attack on him. This lead them to treat the guy for just a night of drinking, not anything serious like what had happened. This exasperated the injury and caused him much more pain, since they were pumping someone who had a ruptured bladder and shut-down intestine with fluids to keep him hydrated, fluids which were filling his abdomen and drowning him.
It took a week before anyone figured out what had really happened, and by then the owner had already tried to pin it on the witness, who was black, claiming that the victim had been being racist towards him. Basically "the black guy did it" defense. He then suggested that the guy had been hit by a car or beaten up after he left. All this was made to cover his tracks and divert attention away from him, the real assailant.
As I said, the attacker, our boss, had become more and more erratic and detached from reality. I don't know how much to attribute to Glenn Beck and how much to attribute to potential (hard) drug use, but I know that Beck's message had given him fuel to operate on, whether it was the active switch that caused this burst of violence is another issue, but I feel the two can not be separated, as this would have never happened if he wasn't so militant about these conspiracy tea party beliefs.
So now we are closed and many of us have no jobs. I have lost my health insurance because of my lack of income, and have had to sell things to make ends meet and stay in the place I rent. While it has been a rough month and a half, I feel fortunate to only have to deal with money issues, whereas this other guy, our victim, has a long time of potential complications related to his injury and surgery.
The local student newspaper is trying to do a story on this, and for the most part I would like to stay out of any issues that arise from it, but I feel responsible to let anyone who hears about it know that it was what it sounds like, politically-motivated violence from a rabid Glenn Beck fan directly resulting from someone just teasing them about on their views. At least that's what it sounds like to me.
here is a link to the story which was reported today in the university student body newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel: http://www.dailytarheel.com/...