Early Sunday morning a white 29-year-old leather goods salesman named Jason Fordell says he was beaten on a 4 train by a group of four men who eventually stole his bag with nearly $3,000 worth of goods in it. In addition to the gang, Fordell claimed that a fellow straphanger joined in on the subway attack, allegedly saying "Oh, I get a few shots, too" before kicking him in the chest. Police were unable to find the gang, but they were able to find and arrest 54-year-old Barinthe Ramoutar, who Fordell fingered as the eager straphanger. Last night a judge released Ramoutar without bond.
"It's simply physically impossible," Ramoutar's lawyer, Trudy Strassburger, said of the attack yesterday. Her client, she says, is a balding fruit salesmen with no criminal record and arthritis, from 24 years working as a welder, so bad he cannot make a fist. She says that the arrest was just a case of mistaken identity. Fordell identified him on the platform at Jerome Avenue and Fordham Road a good 45 minutes after the attack is said to have occurred. The judge apparently agreed with Ramoutar's lawyer enough to release him without bond. However, he still faces charges of robbery, assault and grand larceny.
Meanwhile, the four other attackers, three black men and a hispanic man, remain at large—which makes it very hard for police to determine if the attack was in fact racially motivated, as Fordell has claimed. Also not helpful to his argument? The fact that Fordell has since admitted that, after being called names, he resorted to racial slurs himself on the fateful train ride. "They're calling me cracker, and so I called him spic," a beaten Fordell told WPIX. When the station then asked, "If you're using racial slurs, why should police call it a hate crime?" Fordell responded, "because they're the ones who started with me."
