B4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 29 , 2019
BY IAN SHAPIRA
charlottesville — The fourth
white supremacist arrested and
convicted for his role in an attack
on a 20-year-old African Ameri-
can man during the 2017 U nite the
Right rally in Charlottesville was
sentenced Tuesday to a little more
than two years in prison.
Ty ler Watkins Davis, 51, of Mid-
dleburg, Fla., had entered an Al-
ford plea in February on a mali-
cious wounding charge in the vi-
cious — and widely seen — beating
of DeAndre Harris, a former spe-
cial education instructional assis-
tant.
The plea meant that Davis, who
belonged to the extremist group
League of the South, acknowl-
edged prosecutors had sufficient
evidence to convict him if the case
had gone to trial. Even though
Davis’s assault on Harris probably
resulted in Harris’s worst injury,
he was given l ess time behind bars
— two years and one month —
than the three other defendants
already sentenced in the case.
Charlottesville Circuit Judge
Richard E. Moore said he gave
Davis the lighter punishment be-
cause he hit Harris only once, as
opposed to the other assailants
who stomped or struck Harris
multiple times.
But Moore did not hold back in
rebuking Davis. The judge said
Davis had no reason to strike Har-
ris with a stick and could have
easily just walked away from the
melee. Although Davis hit Harris
only one time, it was a blow that
tore a gash in his skull that ulti-
mately needed eight staples.
“This is one of the m ost disturb-
ing and saddest videos I’ve seen in
my e ntire life,” Moore said. He s aid
that when Harris tried escaping
from the attack, he “looked like a
frightened, terrorized animal.”
“DeAndre Harris could have
easily died,” t he judge s aid.
Davis’s sentencing capped
more than a year’s worth of pros-
ecutions for the attack on Harris,
which was captured on video and
spread virally across the Internet.
Jacob S. Goodwin of Arkansas,
who wore a body-length shield
and military helmet while kicking
Harris on the ground, got an
eight-year sentence; Alex Michael
Ramos of Georgia received six
years; and Daniel Borden of Ohio
was sentenced to nearly four
years.
Two other assailants from the
attack remain at large. Law en-
forcement authorities have so far
failed to identify or capture them,despite ample photographs and
footage of them online beating
Harris and marching during other
moments of the rally. One of the
men, with short blond hair, was
wearing sunglasses, khaki pants
and a tucked-in white long-sleeve
shirt. The other sported a ball cap
and a red beard. Authorities have
nicknamed the first “Sunglasses”
or “Preppy” and the second “Red
Beard.”
Harris was beaten so badly that
law enforcement authorities said
he nearly died. About 90 minutes
later, neo-Nazi James A. Fields Jr.
rammed his Dodge Challenger
into a crowd of anti-racist protest-
ers, killing Heather Heyer, 32, a
paralegal, and injuring others.
Fields was convicted of federal
hate crimes and, separately in
state court, first-degree murder.
He h as been sentenced to multiple
life terms in prison.
In f ootage o f the Harris beating,
Davis is wearing a circular, mili-
tary-style boonie hat and can be
seen striking Harris in the head
with a tire thumper, a club-like
device used to check an automo-
bile’s tire pressure. Immediately
afterward, Harris struggles to lift
himself off the floor of the garage,
but Goodwin kicks him several
times, and then Borden smacks
him with a wooden plank and
Ramos h its him. “Sunglasses” and
“Red Beard” appear to also hit
Harris with w ooden flagpoles.
Harris attracted the ire of the
white supremacists after he had
struck one of them in the head
with a Maglite flashlight. Harris
was charged with misdemeanor
assault and battery but was ac-
quitted in March 2018 after a
judge determined Harris meant to
knock away the white national-
ist’s flagpole.
Moments before he was sen-
tenced Tuesday, Davis stood up
and faced the judge and apolo-
gized to Harris, who along with
his family members d id not attend
the hearing. “I know he suffered,”Davis said, saying he was sorry. “I
regret ever coming to Charlottes-
ville, and I regret my a ctions i n the
parking garage. I was... raging,
barely functioning... hated life.”
Davis, a former Comcast cable
technician, went on to recount his
struggles with alcoholism, which
he said enabled him to get “sucked
into negative websites.”
“By day, I was a cable tech, but
by night, I was a crusading de-
fender of my p eople,” he said.
But Davis said his brief stint in
jail in Charlottesville, followed by
more than a year of home moni-
toring at his residence in Florida
with his wife and 19-year-old ad-
opted a utistic son, helped rehabil-
itate him. He said he is no longer
part of the League of the South,
does not communicate with any-
one in the group and erased all
contact information for its mem-
bers.
In jail, he said, he fell into long
conversations with other inmates,
many of them minorities a nd peo-
ple with different political lean-
ings. “ This enabled my h umaniza-
tion process,” he said. “I realized
that we are not all that different.”
Davis’s defense attorneys tried
hard to persuade Moore not to
give him any more time behind
bars and asked that he be given
additional home electronic moni-
toring. His wife, mother and son
testified or read statements on his
behalf and said they needed him
at h ome.
Nina Alice-Antony, senior as-
sistant commonwealth’s attorney,
told Moore that Davis deserved at
most the same amount of time —
three years and 10 months — as
Borden received.
“Borden and the others were
more culpable,” s he said. “But that
is not meant to minimize the cul-
pability of Mr. Davis.... How easy
would it have been for Mr. Davis to
walk away [from the parking ga-
rage]? To go home? To go back to
your wife and your son?”
[email protected]VIRGINIA
Fourth attacker in Charlottesville garage is sentenced
ZACH D. ROBERTS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
DeAndre Harris lies on the ground in a Charlottesville parking garage as Unite the Right rallygoers
beat him. Four men have received sentences ranging from just over two years to eight years in prison.CHARLOTTESVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT
Two men — dubbed “Sunglasses” and “Red Beard” — remain at
large two years later. Authorities haven’t identified them despite
ample photographs and footage from the assault and the rally.Former member of
extremist group gets
least time in prisoning, but he wasn’t there. She
said she didn’t have the heart to
tell them just then that he was
dead.
Witnesses who saw the gunfire
called police to Indian Head
Highway and Bald Eagle Road,
where officers found both men
shot in the car in the roadway.
“These people weren’t doing
anything but minding their own
business,” s aid Jennifer Donelan,
a spokeswoman for the Prince
George’s County Police Depart-
ment.
Eventually Tc hatchoua gath-
ered the couple’s four children,
ages 3 to 15, and said a prayer.
Then she told them their father
had gone to heaven.
“Our 7-year-old son started
looking at me really angry,” Tcha-
tchoua said. “He said, ‘God, can I
please see my dad one more
time?’ ”
Casey Robinson’s sister, who
asked that her name not be used
because of concerns about secu-
SHOOTING FROM B1
rity, said she was at a loss for
words. She said her brother was
not married and did not have
children. He worked as trash
collector and was a hard worker,she said.
“He was a loving, caring broth-
er; I’m going to miss him,” she
said. “He was my only brother.”
Through witness interviewsand cooperation from Uber, the
investigation led detectives to
Wilson, who was arrested at his
home not far from the shooting
scene within nine hours of theincident, police said.
“He has confessed to being
inside of the Uber and he tells
detectives that he was high on
PCP,” Ordono said.
Online court records did not
list an attorney for Wilson.
Detectives are still working to
determine what exactly hap-
pened in the car leading up to the
shooting.
“I know that this is extremely
scary for our community to hear
that something like this has oc-
curred, but the best news we can
give you at s uch a horrible time is
that these detectives did their
job,” Donelan said, “with the help
of Uber, with the help of eyewit-
nesses, with information that
they were able to garner through
their investigation and they got
this person off the street.”
Uber in a statement thanked
Prince George’s County police for
their work.
“We are devastated by this news
and our hearts go out to the
families and loved ones of Beaud-
ouin Tc hakounte and Casey Robin-son,” an Uber representative said.
“We will continue to work with law
enforcement on their investiga-
tion into this heinous crime.”
Tc hatchoua described Tc hak-
ounte as calm, patient and quiet.
Family members said he had
been an Uber driver for three
years and had immigrated to the
United States from Cameroon
about 15 years ago and became a
citizen.
“He was a loving dad,” T chatch-
oua said. “He loved his kids so
much. I don’t know how they are
going to cope with that.”
Valere Tc hakounte, the uncle
of Beaudouin, was distraught af-
ter hearing how police described
the way his nephew was killed.
“How can that happen? Why
him?” Tchakounte’s uncle said.
Donelan said the shooting was
an isolated incident.
“We have not seen anything
like this before,” Donelan said.
“We pray that we never see any-
thing like this ever again.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Suspect in slaying of Uber driver, passenger was high on PCP, police say
ment officials said investigators
are working t o determine whether
the suspect has mental-health is-
sues.
D.C. Police Chief Peter New-
sham said that a motive remains
unknown, that detectives have
ruled out robbery and sexual as-
sault, and that they found no con-
nection between the victim and
the suspect. Newsham drew com-
parisons to two other random kill-
ings that have claimed the lives of
people doing the most everyday
activities in neighborhoods not
accustomed t o violent crime.
A police spokesman confirmed
that he was referring to Wendy
Martinez, a runner who was bru-
tally stabbed by a disturbed man
in September as she passed
through Logan Circle, and Robert
Bolich, a 62-year-old bridge in-
spector stabbed on the job last
week, allegedly by a man who told
police that the devil made him do
it. Martinez’s killer has been con-
victed; a man charged in Bolich’s
stabbing i s awaiting trial.
STABBING FROM B1 Newsham said he hopes the
quick arrest in Magill’s killing will
help “alleviate some of the fears
that are out there in the c ommuni-
ty.” He called the District, experi-
encing a 13 percent spike in homi-
cides this year, “a very, very safe
city” and called this type of crime
“very r are.”
Magill’s father, Jeffrey Magill,
said his daughter was “minding
her own business and somebody
just decided to attack her.” Speak-
ing from his home in Yuba City,
Calif., north of Sacramento, he
said, “I don’t know how you get ahandle on somebody doing some-
thing like t hat.”
Margery Magill and h er sister —
daughters of now-retired school-
teachers — raised goats and
helped 4 -H c lubs w ith a gricultural
programs. From the age of 9, she
wanted to see the world, Jeffrey
Magill said, and she made it to
nearly two dozen countries, saying
to family and on the Internet that
she traveled so much she proudly
did n ot own a bed.
“She had more of a life in her
27 years than a lot of people have
in their whole lives,” J effrey Magill
said, offering a partial list of the
place she either visited or lived —
Costa Rica, Tanzania, Nicaragua,
Turkey, India and Zanzibar. She
hitchhiked, took planes, hopped
on motorcycles, farmed with lo-
cals and lived with indigenous
people in A frica.
Jeffrey Magill described his
daughter as a “handful” while
growing u p, noting s he c hallenged
her t eachers as early as k indergar-
ten. “She was stubborn, quite
opinionated,” her father said, but
also “a model kid” who studiedhard and played the guitar. They
disagreed on politics — he a sup-
porter of President Trump, she a
liberal who attended Barack
Obama’s first inauguration and
joined t he Women’s March.
Margery Magill graduated f rom
the University of California at Da-
vis and participated in a program
that landed her a job with the Jane
Goodall Institute. Her jobs after
college varied from grain mer-
chandiser to helping a company
that produces trivia games.
She maintained her interest in
higher education, and s he recently
worked with a group connecting
college s tudents t o jobs in agricul-
ture. Co-worker Brytann Busick
called her a “natural leader” and
“the most outwardly friendly of
the group.” Busick added: “She
followed her passions; she was
into a lot of things. She always had
a smile on her f ace, a lways.”
Magill g raduated this year from
the University of Westminster in
London with a master’s degree in
international relations. She
moved to the District, working as
project coordinator at the Wash-ington Center helping place grad-
uate students in jobs and intern-
ships a round the world.
She lived near Howard Univer-
sity and picked up extra money
walking dogs as a contractor for a
dog-walking company called Rov-er, a sort of Uber for dog owners.
She was walking a dog for a tenant
in an apartment building on Ir-
ving Street when she was k illed.
Her screams caught the atten-
tion of Chambers, a 57-year-old
lecturer at G eorgetown U niversity
and his wife, Dianne. Chambers
didn’t know M agill b ut recognized
her from previous dog-walking
stints because o f her short red hair
cut into a bob style and high-top
sneakers.
“She was always very friendly,”
he said.
Jeffrey Magill said his daughter
was a lso “pretty tough and in good
shape,” and as he tried to compre-
hend his loss and the apparent
random attack, he said: “Whatev-
er happened, she probably fought
it pretty good.”
Then he paused, adding, “I’m
hoping she did.”
peter [email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Rachel Weiner and Fenit Nirappil
contributed to this report.Arrest made in seemingly random fatal stabbing of Park View dog walker
“She had more of a life
in her 27 years than a
lot of people have in
their whole lives.”
Jeffrey Magill, father of Margery
Magill, slain Tuesday night in
Northwest WashingtonPHOTOS BY PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY POLICE
Aaron Lanier Wilson Jr., 42, of
Oxon Hill, Md., has been
charged with murder in the
fatal shootings of an Uber
driver and passenger on
Tuesday. Police say he had
called for a ride home.FAMILY PHOTO
Margery Magill, 27, was killed
Tuesday night while walking a
dog in what police described as
a random attack.Stay one step ahead of the weather with the
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