A DJ was attacked early Saturday morning at a Lynnwood bar. National groups that monitor hate groups say those arrested in connection with the attack at the Rec Room Bar and Grill are known "white supremacists."
That came as a big surprise to those at the Rec Room Bar. They say the bar is run as a place that welcomes everyone. They are still reeling from the altercation that unfolded early Saturday morning.
"For something like [that] to have happened was incredibly terrifying," said Jason Baum, the bar's general manager, his voice betraying the terror still hanging over him, more than 18 hours later.
He says a group of people he thought were in a social club walked into the Rec Room Bar his family owns just after midnight early Saturday.
Soon after ordering drinks, they began a racial assault on his friend and DJ, an African-American man, he said. He jumped in to help.
"That's what a friend does," Baum said. "A friend's not going to stand back and watch another friend in need."
Snohomish County sheriff's deputies say they got 911 calls that a brawl had broken out in the Rec Room. They arrived as several suspects fled. It took help from Everett and Lynnwood police as well as the Washington State Patrol to bring it under control.
"And determined they had probable cause to arrest a number of people for a number of crimes," said Snohomish County Lt. Jeff Brand by telephone. He says eight people were arrested.
National organizations that monitor hate groups say at least two of them are known white supremacists, Travis Condor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Cory Thomas Colwell of Eugene, Oregon.
Baum says he and the DJ fought off 10 people. Now both are nursing concussions.
"Shaky, emotional, hard to focus every once in a while," said Baum when asked how he is doing.
He says his Filipino-American mother bought this bar four years ago as a place of tolerance. So what happened here is devastating.
"We're a minority-owned bar that is just trying to pay our bills and support our community," Baum said, "and do things to give back."
What happened here was likely out of his control.
The national organizations that monitor these groups say Saturday was the 34th anniversary of the death of Robert Jay Mathews, a martyr in the white supremacist movement.
He was shot to death by federal agents on Whidbey Island on Dec. 8, 1984.
The eight people arrested early Saturday should make a first court appearance Monday.
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