For now, alleged child kicker facing minor charges
After a man with a criminal record allegedly kicked her 1-year-old African-American son to the floor of a Wichita store, hurled racial slurs and ranted about being a white supremacist, Lashantai Whitaker expected the case to be treated with the most seriousness.
So far, Whitaker says, she is seeing a lack of justice.
For now, the case has been assigned to the lowest court level — Municipal Court, where 31-year-old Trace Riff is accused of misdemeanors, the lowest level of crime.
“Attacking a child — I wouldn’t think that’s the appropriate court for that,” she said.
Whitaker was already upset that Riff, despite his criminal history and the new accusations, was able to get out of jail after posting a $3,500 bond within just hours of the incident Sunday morning inside the Dillons grocery store at Douglas and Hillside.
Riff has described himself in court papers as being homeless. Now that he’s free, Whitaker said, “he’s getting a lot of time to be roaming” until he is due in Municipal Court for an initial appearance on Jan. 14.
On Friday, The Eagle asked state and federal officials to help explain why the incident — involving a child victim and a racial component — so far is not being dealt with on the state or federal level.
District Attorney Marc Bennett, whose office prosecutes state laws in Sedgwick County District Court, said he wouldn’t say why the case had been initially referred by the Wichita Police Department to the city’s Municipal Court.
Although the case has been sent to Municipal Court, Bennett said, his office will be reviewing the case next week to determine if it will file charges.
Under Kansas law, Bennett noted, “when someone has unwanted physical contact with another, the crime is typically battery. If the victim is not significantly injured, the crime is misdemeanor battery,” which involves “rude, angry or insolent touching.” “It becomes aggravated battery if a weapon was used or if the victim was injured (“great bodily harm”),” Bennett explained in an email.
Whitaker said the thick coat that her 1-year-old son was wearing when he was kicked protected him from physical injury. But it caused the boy to scream and cry as never before — he was that rattled, she said.
“I understand the law, but it’s not like he kicked an adult. He kicked a 1-year-old,” Whitaker said. “Even though he didn’t really injure him, he could have.”
The criminal complaint in Municipal Court accuses Riff of knowingly and violently “kicking (the boy) in the back, knocking him face first into the ground.”
A second accusation says that Riff struck the boy because of his race. Whitaker says that Riff shouted the “N word” and kept saying that he was a white supremacist.
The racial slurs also greatly upset Whitaker’s 11-year-old daughter, who was holding her little brother’s hand and began screaming when he was suddenly kicked from behind, Whitaker said.
“Parents should be able to go into the store without being paranoid,” she said.
A third accusation in the municipal complaint accuses Riff of resisting an officer who responded to the store.
While Bennett noted that “Kansas does not have a ‘hate crime’ statute,” if a felony crime is found to be motivated in any way by race, it can be used to increase the penalty. But again, he said, that would apply only if the crime is charged as a felony.
Dixon Land, a spokeswoman for the FBI, which investigates federal hate crimes, said Friday that the FBI knows of the incident involving the Wichita boy.
Land said he can’t confirm whether the FBI is investigating the incident.
The FBI’s website defines a hate crime as a “traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a ‘criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.’ Hate itself is not a crime — and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.”
The website says that state or local authorities deal with most of the nation’s hate crimes.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
