The perpetrator prosecutors describe as “the man who started” the now-viral mob beatdown in downtown Cincinnati last month was hit with additional federal drug charges on Monday.
Jermaine Mathews, 39, was indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges this week after being charged with felonious assault, assault, and aggravated riot for his purported participation in the July 26 Cincinnati attack. According to a criminal complaint, Mathews was seen “punching and stomping on [a] victim with his hands and feet attempting to cause serious physical harm” during the Cincinnati attack.
After his arrest in July, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio found additional cause to charge him with “conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl,” U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II said in a press release.
“Mathews, who was described as a primary ‘coordinator’ of the July 26 brawl in downtown Cincinnati, was on bond after being charged locally with aggravated riot and assault,” the release said. “He was arrested today by federal agents and Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office RENU officials on the superseding indictment.”
Mathews is one of eight people charged in the attack so far. During the beatdown, a mob of black people beat up, stomped on, and knocked unconscious two white victims. Videos of the attack went immediately viral, as did condemnation from black Cincinnati officials who decried law enforcement for arresting exclusively black people.
Videos of the attack show the white male victim attempt to slap a black man, though the context around the slap in unclear. The white male is then brutally assaulted by a mob of people. After seven members of the mob were charged, Ohio state Representative Cecil Thomas questioned why the white victim had not yet been investigated for allegedly inciting the incident.
Then, following pressure from Cincinnati Democrats, the white male victim Alex Tchervinski was charged with disorderly conduct, his lawyer Douglas Brannon said last week.
Tchervinski was hit in the head dozens of time and robbed. He pleaded not guilty at his court appearance on Tuesday.
“What this has done, it has made Alex a victim now for the second time by bringing criminal charges against him,” Brannon told Fox News. “What actually occurred is Alex was hit multiple times, before he slapped back in an attempt to try and defend himself and back off this group of thugs.”
Prosecutors initially declined to press charges against the victim but changed their minds after Cincinnati Democrats’ “blatant political meddling,” Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police President Ken Kober said.
“Overruling law enforcement and prosecutors for cheap political points is a disgraceful stain on our city, and those responsible should be utterly ashamed of themselves,” Kober said.
Thomas, on the other hand, called Tchervinski’s charge of disorderly conduct a measly “fourth-degree misdemeanor” and a “slap in the face to the Black Community.”
“This only inflames the community even more,” Thomas said in a statement. “The proper charges for him should have been assault and aggravated rioting. However, if the city or prosecutor truly wanted to diffuse this situation and bring the temperature down, they should drop all aggravated rioting charges and reduce all felonious assault charges down to misdemeanor assault, except for the individual that struck the lady.”