Indians Charged in Assault of White on Reservation

A white man was beaten, kicked in the head and left for dead with a rope around his neck on an Indian reservation. Three Indians were arrested.

The FBI and federal prosecutors said it was too early to label the assault a hate crime, though they’re not ruling it out. Relatives of the victim and one of the suspects blamed alcohol, not race.

Brad Young, 21, was in critical condition Wednesday. He was found early Saturday, about seven hours after he was beaten on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Louis Means and Byron Bissonette, both 18, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. The charges are federal because the crime happened on the reservation.

A 17-year-old juvenile was also taken into custody.

Local newspapers and TV reported that Sheriff Russel Waterbury said the crime was racially motivated. However, he later told a radio station he had been misunderstood.

“I’ve got a lot of calls on that, and that was my opinion, to do something that horrible to somebody else,” he told KWSN on Wednesday. “I didn’t mean the actual hate crime crime, so I don’t know where they come up with where I was quoted as saying that. But that was my opinion.”

Waterbury did not return calls Wednesday to the Associated Press.

According to Waterbury, Young had been pulled around a field by the rope around his neck and was severely cut and barely recognizable because he had been kicked in the face with steel-toe boots.

The sheriff said the three suspects had been partying with Young the night of the attack and Young had bought them alcohol.

Young’s mother, Carol Bucholz of Lexington, Neb., said her son’s left ear was almost torn off and his right ear was badly damaged.

She said he suffered head injuries but that there was no sign of brain damage.