Troy Dale West Walks Early for Beating Up Tasha Hill in Front of a Cracker Barrel Restaurant

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Well, all the blond highlights and the beard are gone. Troy Dale West in court in 2009 for assault, battery and other charges stemming from his beating of Tasha Hill.

Field Negro had this update to the story that had me shaking my head in disgust. Black Voices has it in detail. And this is evidence of a New South? What New South? This is the Old South speaking.

A white man from Georgia who beat a black female Army reservist as her young child looked on and begged him to stop has been released from jail early.

Troy Dale West […] had only been sentenced to six months in prison for beating Tasha Hill […] after they had words while both trying to enter a Cracker Barrel restaurant.

West allegedly punched Hill in the face, kicked her as she fell to the ground and yelled racial epithets.

“I heard my daughter screaming, ‘Mommy! Mommy!”‘ Hill said. “I was scared. I didn’t know why it was happening.”

During the trial, West’s defense presented Hill as a hothead with a history of violence who spit on West and initiated the encounter. While evidence shows that Hill certainly may need anger counseling, West’s brutal attack on this woman is inexcusable. I wonder would he have been as quick to attack a man of similar stature?

Despite the beat-down that he issued to a woman, West pleaded to misdemeanor charges in a plea deal that netted him only six months behind bars; he was facing felony charges and 44 years in jail.

It’s even more of an insult that West did not serve the length of his short term. Given the way he beat Hill, isn’t anyone concerned that this guy might be easy to set off and that he needs to learn there are serious consequences for unjustified violence?

Tasha Hill’s case was harmed by evidence, brought by defense attorney Tony Axam, of two earlier recorded instances of altercations and disorderly conduct–one in 2005, and one in 2009. In both instances, she also threatened others with bodily harm. What did these incidents have to do with West beating Hill? To show that she provoked him into beating her. Two young teens who lived in her neighborhood, whom Hill suspected of burgling her home, testified to her threats. Thereafter, her attorney, Kip Jones, seems to have betrayed and deserted her, as well as the Clayton County prosecutor, Tracy Graham Lawson, at the recitation of these incidents.  They quickly concluded a plea deal of six months incarceration rather than 44 years for West.  The jury never got a chance to debate the evidence.

Hill now claims that she suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome and is pursuing a civil case against West for damages.

While I do believe that both Tasha Hill and Troy Dale West have anger issues and that both should obtain therapy for these problems, Hill is more likely to get it than West.   Why?  He’s one of those good ole boys.  Nothing’s wrong with him, but everything is wrong with everyone else. Furthermore, West’s accusation that Hill spat at him, thus instigating the beatdown, still does not ring true for me, despite the fact that two “credible” witnesses saw Hill spitting at West. I said before that spitting at someone is the sign of some long-simmering, deep-seated, personal hatred for another. I’ve interacted with many black folks in my lifetime, but none have expressed that kind of hatred for and towards whites. Hill and West were total strangers, but Hill was a black woman from the Atlanta suburbs and West was a white man from out in the sticks. There is still friction between the two groups, though people like to smooth or play down such perceptions.  Hill simply objected to his swinging the door that might harm her daughter, who also witnessed her mother’s beating.

West was said to have hurled racial epithets at her during the beating, and this I believe. None of this seems to have been taken into consideration by the prosecutor and Hill’s attorney.

Furthermore, there is such a thing as social norms being violated. You do not beat up a woman, not even a woman who may be out of control or hitting your last nerve. Any woman. West was 100 pounds heavier than Hill and was 6’4″  to Hill’s 5’5″.   Tasha Hill may have met her match in anger in Troy West, but he did not have to beat her down to unconsciousness or death.  She yelled at him, but she did not lay a hand on him. He could have involved the Cracker Barrel management and had his wife call the police. He could have blown her off. The very worst that could have happened was that Hill would be kept from patronizing this or other Cracker Barrel restaurants, and that she would have been cited once more. But this went down the hard way, which make me think once again that West not only has anger issues, but racial animosity. Nothing that West visited on Hill was justified in any circumstance.

During the trial, an assistant district attorney, Jason Green, asked West while on the witness stand, “Is it acceptable to hit a woman?”

West responded, “It depends.”

This guy would beat up his own wife.

Troy Dale West should have gotten the full six months, regardless of the pressure Worth County Sheriff Freddie Tompkins, who held him in his home county, received from West’s good ole boy friends.  I’m sure some Georgia whites are celebrating up and down at his release, but I think that we have not heard the last from Troy Dale West, regardless of whether Tasha Hill wins or loses her civil suit.

~ by blksista on December 16, 2010.