CHICAGO _ A Cook County judge ordered no bail Friday for four people accused of broadcasting a live Facebook video of their alleged attack on a mentally disabled teen.
"I'm looking at each of you and wondering where was the sense of decency that each of you should have had?" Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil said. "I don't see it."
On hearing the no-bail ruling, a relative of the victim clapped and loudly said, "Yes!"
A short time later, Priscilla Covington, a grandmother of two sisters charged in the attack, hustled past a throng of media outside the Leighton Criminal Court Building, telling reporters, "I didn't raise them that way."
The racially charged video shows the four _ who are all black _ cutting the white victim's scalp with a knife, punching and kicking him and laughing as they repeatedly forced his head into a toilet.
For the first time, authorities alleged that one of the four, Jordan Hill, who knew the victim from attending the same alternative school in Aurora, first beat the victim in the back of a van after he became angry that the victim's mother was contacting him by Facebook about her son's whereabouts. Prosecutors said Hill demanded $300 from the victim's mother if she wanted her son back.
It wasn't until later that the live Facebook video captured the four slapping, beating, cutting and stabbing the victim as he was bound and gagged in an apartment on Chicago's West Side, authorities alleged.
Charged in the attack were Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; and sisters Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, who lived in the apartment where the bulk of the assault allegedly took place.
The four were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to police and prosecutors. Hill also was charged with robbery, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and residential burglary, while both Covingtons were charged with residential burglary, police said.
Prosecutors revealed in court that the 18-year-old victim, who lives with his parents in suburban Streamwood, has schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Meanwhile, the victim's brother-in-law said Friday that the teen has been "struggling" to recover after his ordeal but is safe with his family.
A man who runs a Reddit site called Uplifting News started a Go Fund ME page for the victim that had raised more than $42,000 Friday from in excess of 1,500 donors, according to the fundraising web site. Razor Sheldon, of San Francisco, said he does not know the family but wanted to focus on helping the victim rather than seeking vengeance against the perpetrators.
On his fundraising web page, Sheldon called the crime "horrific" and wrote of the victim: "Let's prove to him that there is far more good in this world than the evil he experienced."
Boyd said he spoke with Sheldon and Go Fund Me to verify the legitimacy of the fund and said a family member had set up another Go Fund Me campaign.
He said the family is grateful for the outpouring of support but added: "We're not asking anyone for anything. We're a little overwhelmed. We don't want to take advantage of anybody."
Prosecutors said the victim's mother dropped him off at a McDonald's in Streamwood on Dec. 31 to meet a friend. He later asked to spend the night at the friend's place that night and the next. But by Monday, communication from the teen stopped. Later that same day, however, the victim's brother found out on Facebook that his brother was with Hill. The mother reached out to Hill on Facebook to say she wanted her son to return home, prosecutors said.
Angered by the mother's Facebook contacts, Hill, who by then had stolen a van and bought and smoked marijuana with the teen, beat the victim in the back of the van, prosecutors said.
Shortly after the two arrived at the sisters' third-floor West Side apartment, Hill started to harass the victim, slapping him, prosecutors said. Armed with a knife, Hill was joined by Cooper in ordering the teen to face the wall in a corner, screaming at him and forcing him to kiss the floor and say, "I love black people," prosecutors said.
By Tuesday, Brittany Covington began posting the abuse live on Facebook, prosecutors said. She smoked what appeared to be a blunt _ a cigar emptied and stuffed with marijuana _ while narrating some of the action.
The chilling 28-minute video showed the victim crouched in a corner and mostly motionless with an expression of fear on his face. His mouth was taped shut and his hands and feet appear to be bound with orange electrical tape.
Among the abuse seen on the live Facebook video, prosecutors said, are one of the women laughing as she punched the teen; a male foot on the victim's head; the teen groaning in pain as a male pulls a cord around his neck; and the victim screaming in fear when a male approaches with a knife, saying, "Should I shank his a _ ?"
At one point, prosecutors alleged, Hill and Cooper ordered the victim into a bathroom and forced him to drink water from the toilet while punching him in the back of the head and ordering him to say, "F _ _ Trump!"
Later, the teen was bound and gagged, a sock placed in his mouth and his lips taped shut. With the knife, Hill then cut a chunk of the victim's hair, cutting his head, and stabbed him in the left forearm, prosecutors said.
Covington could be heard expressing mock disappointment at the attention the live feed was getting on Facebook.
"Y'all ain't even commenting on my s _ , man!" she says into the camera.
Second-floor residents twice complained on Tuesday about the "banging, yelling and stomping sounds along with laughing" from their upstairs neighbors, prosecutors said. The second time, both sisters and Cooper chased the neighbors to their apartment while Hill ran out of the apartment building, threatening to come back with a gun, prosecutors said. Cooper then kicked in the neighbors' front door and broke into their residence with the two sisters as the neighbors fled their apartment, prosecutors said.
The victim was able to flee the building and stopped by police a block over while outdoors in shorts, a tank top and sandals despite freezing temperatures. Police ran his name and discovered he had been reported missing from Streamwood by his parents.
He was treated at a hospital for cuts and lacerations to his head, face and body as well as a stab wound to his left arm, authorities said.
Police believe the victim was tied up for four or five hours. All four suspects have given statements admitting their roles in the attack, police said.
Before the charges were announced Thursday, the video had become a national rallying cry for conservative pundits who tried to pin the blame for the attack on the Black Lives Matters movement. Debate also raged on social media and cable news stations about whether police would consider the black-on-white assault a hate crime.
