Daily Mail: An Iraq war veteran whose bravery inspired two statues says he was beaten by a group of teens in Washington, DC on Friday night after they approached and asked him whether ‘black lives matter’.
Chris Marquez, 30, a decorated US Marine veteran, was eating in a McDonald’s when the youths walked up and started questioning him, WJLA reported.
‘I felt threatened and thought they were trying to intimidate me, so I figured I’m just going to keep to my food, eat my food and hopefully they’ll leave me alone,’ Marquez told the station.
The youths started calling him a racist, he said, but it was when he tried to leave the restaurant that things went badly for him.
The marine, who had survived ambushes in Fallujah at the height of the Iraq War, was taken unaware again — and this time he was unarmed and without backup.
One of the teens hit him in the head from behind, knocking him to the floor, where the gang beat him savagely before robbing him. Marquez told police that one youth hit him in the head with a handgun.
‘As soon as I walked out of the McDonald’s I got hit in the back of the head, or the side of the head,’ he told WJLA. ‘I just dropped to the ground, and [the McDonald’s manager] says I looked unconscious.’
The veteran believes that the attack was a hate crime, and that he was targeted because he was white.
‘I believe this was a hate crime and I was targeted because of my skin color,’ he told The Daily Caller.
‘Too many of these types of attacks have been happening against white people by members of the black community and the majority of the main stream media refuses to report on it.’
Marquez was taken to George Washington Hospital where he was evaluated for several hours and treated for head trauma and an eye contusion. He was left with bruises and cuts to his face, and says that he’s had trouble sleeping since the event due to a sharp pain that he often feels in his head.
That wasn’t the only indignity the veteran suffered: when he awoke on the sidewalk outside McDonald’s, he found his pants ripped and his wallet — containing $400 in cash, three credit cards and his Veterans Affairs medical card, among other things — missing.
The youths used the cards that night to the tune of $115, and Marquez hopes that the trail will help police catch them.
