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Suspects Thomas Massey (left) and Tom Keenan (right) in their Philadelphia Police Department mugshots.
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“I could have died that day,” one of the marines told the court on Thursday morning.
Nearly one month after we told you that two U.S. Marines Corps reservists said they were attacked in Old City on November 17th near the controversial “We the People” rally, the two suspects and their accusers appeared in a Philadelphia courtroom on Thursday morning.
The marines, Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres, both testified in uniform about the incident, while three marine officers, including their commanding officer, stood in the gallery. The suspects, Thomas Massey and Tom Keenan, who have been linked to antifa on websites and social media, sat together with their individual lawyers and did not speak.
The marines, who are not from the Philadelphia area, said that they had traveled to the city with other members of their helicopter unit, headquartered at Fort Dix, to attend a Marine event that night at a local hotel ballroom. They said that they had no knowledge of the nearby rally, which drew members of the alt-right as well as a large number of counter-protestors, Keenan and Massey reportedly among them.
According to the marines’ testimony, they were touring historical landmarks near Front and Chestnut streets when suspect Thomas Keenan approached them. Godinez testified that Keenan asked them “Are you proud?,” to which Godinez remembers responding “We are Marines.” Torres said that he remembers Keenan asking “Are you Proud Boys?,” an allusion to one of the alt-right groups behind the rally, and one that Torres said he didn’t understand. “I didn’t know what Proud Boys meant,” he said.
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| The suspects hide their faces from the cameras in the courthouse on Thursday. |
Whatever Keenan said, both marines testified that Keenan, Massey, and approximately ten other people — men and women, some masked and some unmasked — then began attacking them with mace, punches, and kicks, and calling them “nazis” and “white supremacists.”
On the stand, Godinez said that he was “bewildered” by being called a white supremacist and immediately cried out, “I’m Mexican!” After that, as the attack continued, both men...
