Police: Beating on video began after friendly encounter

The two 18-year-olds had been schoolmates, police say. After meeting at McDonald's, they spent two days together, driving around visiting friends. Then a pretend fight between them escalated into a brutal beating of a mentally disabled teenager that has stirred racial tensions and outrage after being broadcast on Facebook Live.
How the white suburban teen ended up beaten by four black people, threatened with a knife and taunted with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump is among the puzzles authorities are still trying to piece together after the four were charged with hate crimes yesterday.
The alleged attackers will make their first appearance in court Friday, when they also face charges of kidnapping and battery for the assault, which was captured on cellphone video by one of the assailants and viewed by millions on social media.

"This should never have happened," said David Boyd, the victim's brother-in-law at a brief news conference in suburban Chicago. He said the victim was traumatized but doing as well as could be expected. Neal Strom, who is acting as a family spokesman, told The Associated Press that the victim has had "profound emotional and physical disabilities throughout his life." He did not elaborate.
The uproar over the beating has intensified the glare on Chicago after a bloody year of violent crime and protests against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a police department that has been accused of brutality and hushing up wrongdoing. The department has also been the subject of a long civil-rights investigation by the Justice Department, which is expected to report its findings soon. It also stirred emotions still raw after a nasty presidential election campaign that split the nation.

The case heightened political tensions on social media, with some conservatives suggesting it was linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Police said there was no indication of any connection.

The cruelty of the attack and the intense social media exposure prompted President Barack Obama to respond, calling it "despicable."
"I take these things very seriously," he told Chicago's WBBM-TV on Thursday. But he said the incident does not mean that race relations have gotten worse.
"We see visuals of racial tensions, violence and so forth because of smartphones and the internet and media ... A lot of the problems that have been there a long time," he said.

Chicago police initially said the youth was singled out because he has "special needs," not because he was white. But authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects' use of racial slurs and their references to the victim's disability.