A white racist accused of fatally stabbing a 66-year-old stranger on a Manhattan street because he was black says he’d intended it as “a practice run” in a mission to deter interracial relationships.
James Harris Jackson, 28, was in court Monday, as prosecutors charged him with murder as an act of terrorism in addition to the murder as a hate crime charge he’d already been facing. Jackson did not speak, and his attorney had no comment.
Speaking with a reporter for the Daily News at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex a day earlier, Jackson said he envisioned a white woman thinking: “Well, if that guy feels so strongly about it, maybe I shouldn’t do it.”
The victim, Timothy Caughman, who was remembered as a gentleman and a good neighbor, was alone and collecting bottles for recycling last week when he was attacked from behind with a sword. He staggered, bleeding, into a police station and later died at a hospital.
Childhood friends of Caughman, who grew up in Queens, attended the hearing and said he was a kind man who didn’t deserve the brutality.
“Tim Caughman did not deserve to die like that,” said Portia Clark. “Nobody does. I mean, come on, we’re black, white, yellow, brown — that’s ridiculous. We’re trying to get along.”
Carl Nimmons wept outside court after seeing Jackson. “It really hurt me to see that man, because I can’t do nothing about it. I don’t have the power to do anything about it,” he said.
Nimmons says he and his wife met Caughman when they were kids growing up together in the South Jamaica Houses.
Read more at White Supremacist in NYC Sword Killing Charged With Murder as Terrorism | NBC New York http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/White-Supremacist-NYC-Sword-Killing-Indicted-Murder-Terrorism-417219563.html#ixzz4cdIrz0OI
