Damned Racists, Vol II

[Angrboda]

Apparently there is a God after all.  My mistake.

A man hurled racist slurs and a punch at a FedEx driver — then died after he was punched back

Timothy Warren was driving his FedEx truck through a verdant neighborhood in Portland, Ore., when the man he would soon kill screamed that Warren was going too fast.

Warren stopped his truck. He was exhausted, he tried to explain to Joseph Magnuson that day in late September, and just wanted to get done with his work.

Magnuson was unrelenting and hurled numerous aggressive insults and racist slurs at him.

That was something Warren, who is black, could not abide.

He stepped out of the truck, and both men yelled at each other.

Magnuson took a swing. Warren swung back, connecting a single blow above Magnuson’s left eye that sent him tumbling to the ground.

Magnuson, 55, briefly lost consciousness, then died later that evening.

Prosecutors, however, have decided not to charge Warren, 41, with a crime. He did not intend to kill Magnuson and acted in self-defense during the Sept. 26 incident, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said in a memo released Monday.

Magnuson’s death from the fall was precipitated by “extremely poor health,” a medical examiner concluded, and the punch itself was not fatal, Senior Deputy District Attorney Adam Gibbs wrote.

Warren was within his legal right to challenge Magnuson’s “racist vitriol,” Gibbs noted, and said that Warren’s decision to confront Magnuson — rather than ignore him — was not legally significant.

Prosecutors and police pieced together the events using accounts from six eyewitnesses with different views of the fight; three of them observed the entire encounter. They all maintained that Warren had driven at an acceptable speed and that Magnuson started the incident and then escalated it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/20...ched-back/