Racial? Or Not.

KSAT.com is reporting this incident in Spring Texas:

Police Think Attack Was Racially Motivated

POSTED: 11:50 am CDT April 27, 2006UPDATED: 12:08 pm CDT April 27, 2006

HOUSTON -- Two white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a 16-year-old Hispanic boy who they believed had tried to kiss a 12-year-old white girl at a party in Spring, Texas, authorities said.
The attackers forced the boy out of the house party, beat him and sodomized him with a metal pipe, shouting epithets "associated with being Hispanic," said Lt. John Martin with the Harris County Sheriff's Department.
The two teenagers were jailed, officials told KPRC-TV in Houston.

One problem with this story. The motivation may not have been racial. My daughter's best friend is friends and goes to school with the victim. According to her the reason they beat him is because he stole drugs from them and had nothing to do with him kissing a girl or being Hispanic. Now, I realize this is just hearsay. But it seems this kid (the victim) is a popular kid and the kids at his school are saying one thing to each other and it isn't what they told the Police. I have seen this sort of thing over and over. It's a code of silence. I don't know for sure of course, if the reason was racial or not, but the word I'm hearing is that it wasn't.

The thing that bothers me is that if the kids were going to lie, I wish they would have come up with one that wouldn't have pitted one race against another.

Now, I don't care why these monster sick teens beat him. They are evil and should be locked up. But to put a false racial component in the story, especially now, is wrong. My guess is that the kids don't want to get the victim in trouble and chose this particular story to tell reporters and police.

So now we have a story that inflames racial tensions at a time when we really don't need to add to it.