BANGOR, Maine — A woman involved in a possible racially motivated altercation in the city Friday night was not charged because her involvement with the alleged victim “was verbal only,” police said Tuesday.
On Monday, police charged Joshua Pendergast, 42, of Bangor with misdemeanor assault after a 27-year-old African American man reported that he had been punched and pushed by a man, accompanied by a woman, at around 9:52 p.m. on Friday near the junction of Essex and Somerset streets.
“She was involved in the altercation … [but] she has not been charged,” Bangor police Sgt. Tim Cotton clarified in an email Tuesday.
Police have not identified the alleged victim by name.
Two people who came across the victim after the alleged assault said he told them his assailant was wearing a suit and smelled of alcohol when he threw him to the ground and yelled at him “that Trump would deport him.”
When asked Tuesday whether more serious charges might be pending, Cotton said the case remained under investigation.
Tim Feeley, spokesman for the Maine attorney general, said the Civil Rights Division would review the case to determine if it is a hate crime under the Maine Civil Rights Act, if requested.
“Generally, we would receive a referral from the local investigating agency, and then we would review it,” Feeley said, adding that no such request had been made by Tuesday.
A hate crime is criminal conduct motivated by bias. The Maine Civil Rights Act prohibits bias based on race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, physical or mental disability or sexual orientation, the attorney general’s website states.
Kate Dickerson stated on her Facebook page on Sunday that she and John Thompson were walking home from a downtown event Friday when they came upon the victim, who was on the phone with police and searching for his glasses, which were knocked off in the altercation.
Dickerson ended her post about the incident by making a pledge to “protect people who need it” and to “not accept any actions or behavior of adults that harms others as acceptable or the new normal” and asked others to join her and Thompson. By 3 p.m. Tuesday, the post had been shared 498 times and there were 179 comments, many thanking the couple for stopping to help the man.
The couple also sent a letter to the Bangor City Council on Sunday to alert them about their version of the incident.
Three members of the council then took to social media to denounce the reported assault as a hate crime. City Council Chairman Joe Baldacci, Sarah Nichols and Ben Sprague, who said he was sickened by the alleged attack, posted that hate crimes would not be tolerated in Bangor.
Bangor police Officer Daniel Perez was the first officer to respond to the scene on Friday and was able to find the 27-year-old man’s broken glasses, according to Cotton. Bangor detectives spent the weekend tracking down leads, which led to Pendergast, the sergeant said.
Attempts to reach Pendergast and his wife on Tuesday were not successful.
There have been a rash of hate crimes reported all over the country in the aftermath of the presidential election, some in which the perpetrators said they support Trump, NBC has reported.
Pendergast faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000 if convicted of the Class D crime.