The now-viral beatings that happened in Cincinnati last week “catalyzed a conversation” about violent crime and “anti-rule of law culture,” Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Monday evening.
After videos of the brawl — which show a mob of largely black people attacking two white victims, one male and one female — went viral, Cincinnati authorities were quick to say that the video did not provide enough context surrounding the fight. In a video of the incident, an unidentified person can be heard yelling a racial slur before the melee begins, and a defense attorney for one of the suspected perpetrators claims the male victim initiated the violence by slapping his client in the face.
Although the male made attempts to flee the scene, the mob chased him down and curb stomped his head repeatedly. When the female victim tried to intercede, the mob punched her in the face and left her unconscious on the pavement. Both victims sustained traumatic brain injuries in the attack and have been released from the hospital. The female victim returned to her home country of Russia, where she said she feels safer.
Activists, the perpetrators’ legal defense, and some Cincinnati politicians have questioned why the victims were not also arrested, for allegedly inciting the violence. One Cincinnati councilwoman even said that the two victims “begged for that beatdown.” Ramaswamy on the other hand was quick to decry the violence and reach out to the victims, to offer support.
Those who criticized the former presidential hopeful for publicizing and racializing the beating “make it seem like the bigger crime than the assault was actually knowing it,” Ramaswamy said this week.
Americans must be “brave enough to say in public what they would otherwise say in private” when discussing politically charged events like urban crime, Ramaswamy said at town hall on Monday evening.
“We’re not going to solve those problems by hiding from them, we’re going to solve them by confronting those problems directly,” Ramaswamy added.
The “unacceptable” rise of crime that leaves citizens afraid to walk around downtown Cincinnati could be lowered if Ohio authorities commit to incarcerating violent repeat offenders, reopen psychiatric hospitals for criminals who need mental health, bolster the police force, and create “a culture that actually celebrates the rule of law rather than to villainize it,” the candidate said.
No police were present to break up the fight and out of the 100 people who police said watched the fight occur, only one called the authorities.
Downtown Cincinnati restaurants issued a joint statement on the attacks that called for “accountability and decisive action.”
“We are a united coalition—diverse in background, perspective, and political beliefs—but we stand together in condemning violence in any form. The safety of our guests, team members, and neighborhoods is nonnegotiable. It is a foundational expectation we all share,” the statement read.
Five arrests have been made in connection with the fight so far: Dominique Kettle, Montianez Merriweather, Jermaine Matthews, Patrick Rosemond, and DeKyra Vernon.
Ramaswamy’s town hall included Ohio speakers who themselves were victims of violent crime.
Sarah Heringer, whose husband Patrick was stabbed to death in his home earlier this year, blamed city officials’ “negligence, silence and cowardice” for her husband’s death.
“Imagine this. You’re asleep. You wake up to a man standing over your bed with a weapon. How did he get there? Because someone made a decision, because someone signed a paper, because someone did nothing. That’s what leadership looks like in Cincinnati: negligence, silence and cowardice,” Heringer said. “When he needed protection, this city gave him nothing, not even basic safety. The city failed him.”
Repeat offender Mordecia Black, 38, was charged with Patrick’s murder. Black was sentenced to nearly ten years in 2016 after he and three other individuals brutally beat a man in a public square after a concert. Despite Black’s multiple prior convictions for drug trafficking and obstructing police, he was let out of prison in January on supervised release.
Patrick, an Army veteran and local gym owner, was stabbed by Black just months later in June.
“We need leaders who are going to act with spine… not sweeping these issues under the rug,” Ramaswamy said.