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The History of ‘Knockout’: Unprovoked attacks by youth looking to do nothing except inflict pain
National Review ^ | 11/22/2013 | Alec Torres

Posted on 11/24/2013 12:14:34 PM PST by SeekAndFind

As a 78-year-old woman walked down the street in Brooklyn, carrying her purse and bags, a young black male, about 20 years old, punched her in the head as hard as he could and ran away. The man said nothing and didn’t steal a single item.

This is one of the latest instances of “Knockout,” a “game” of evidently increasing popularity. Young people — sometimes female but usually male, predominantly black, in their teens to early 20s, in groups or alone — approach unsuspecting strangers and punch them in the head as hard as possible with the intention to knock them unconscious with a single blow. Sometimes the aggressors will rob the victim, but usually violence itself is the purpose of the attack. Some of the attackers have even recorded videos of their exploits.

At various times and places, the “game” has been called “Knockout,” “Knockout King,” “One-Hitter-Quitter,” “Pick ’Em Out and Knock ’Em Down,” “Knock ’Em and Drop ’Em,” and “Polar-Bear Hunting” (most likely in reference to whites). The attacks are unprovoked and often happen in broad daylight.

They can be deadly.

So far, six fatalities resulting from Knockout have been documented. The first was of an MIT student in 1992, according to an Associated Press report. Yngve Raustein of Norway was approached by a group of teens who asked him what language he was speaking. They then proceeded to sucker-punch him in the face and rob him and his friend. Raustein immediately fell to the ground. When he tried to get up, the assailants stabbed him in the heart. Cambridge police at the time said that these attacks might be perpetrated by just a few kids.

The game was around before 1992, according to a St. Louis man named Askia who spoke with reporters in 2011. He described a similar game, “One-Hitter Quitter” (a name still used today), from the ’80s, when he was growing up. “We’d be out in the club or something and pick a random person and drop him to see if we could knock him out,” Askia said.

Former players have said that they did it for fun. Others speculate that the game is an attempt to demonstrate manhood and earn respect from peers.

After the murder in 1992, further reports of Knockout didn’t emerge until 2011, with the death of 72-year-old Hoan Nguyen. Nguyen, an immigrant from Vietnam, was walking down the street with his wife in St. Louis when an 18-year-old African American charged the couple, striking Hoan Nguyen directly in the face. He died later that day in the hospital. Soon after the Nguyen homicide, John H. Tucker of the Riverfront Times in St. Louis interviewed local youth who confessed to playing Knockout. The kids said it was popular, and one mother revealed that her son had played it as early as two years before the Nguyen incident. Some players were white; most were black.

Such attacks continued in St. Louis throughout that year, with ten known attacks over a 15-month period up to December 2011, including nonfatal attacks on two men, 73 and 51 years old. Reports of attacks began popping up elsewhere, including Illinois, Nevada, and Washington, D.C.

More reports of the game arose over the next two years, including two more deaths in 2012 and another two in 2013. Delfino Mora in Chicago and Colton Gleason in St. Cloud, Minn., were both fatally punched in the face. Mora, who was scavenging for recyclables before being assaulted, was found three hours after the attack on July 10 of this year. Blood was seeping from his nose. He died the next day. Gleason died in the hospital on September 21 within hours after he was attacked. Neither knew his attackers or had provoked the attack.

Two more people — Michael Daniels of Syracuse, N.Y., and Raphael Santiago of Hoboken, N.J. — were killed in May and September of 2013, respectively, in games of Knockout.

Further reports of Knockout have surfaced in the past week, including an assault in San Diego, the first reported on the West Coast. Recently, the attacks have been most prominent in Brooklyn, where eight victims, primarily white Jews, have been randomly targeted by black teens in games of, as New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly called it, “Knockout” and “Polarbearing.”

In all, incidents of “Knockout” have been reported in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, the District of Columbia, and now California. Most of the victims have been whites and Asians, and attackers tend to target Jews, immigrants, and the elderly in particular. Most of the attackers have been African American.

“This was purely a wanton incident,” said Rita, the daughter of the 78-year-old woman attacked in Brooklyn. “Someone wanted to inflict pain onto someone else, no other purpose.”

— Alec Torres is a William F. Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blackrage; blacks; crime; hatecrime; knockout; knockoutgame; urbanyouth
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1 posted on 11/24/2013 12:14:34 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Reverse evolution...


2 posted on 11/24/2013 12:20:00 PM PST by Hildy (Falling down is how you grow. Staying down is how you die.)
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To: SeekAndFind

That the DOJ finds nothing wrong with this, and the MSM has tried to hush it up so as to not embarrass Obama (it’s his sons doing it, after all), speaks to a level of corruption and depravity that, perhaps, can be reversed only by an armed uprising of the citizens.


3 posted on 11/24/2013 12:20:32 PM PST by Arm_Bears (Refuse; Resist; Rebel; Revolt!)
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To: SeekAndFind
This is one of the latest instances of “Knockout,” a “game” of evidently increasing popularity.

This 'game' has been going on for a number of years. Cops didn't report it as a pattern because they didn't want to get labeled as 'racist'... The press didn't want to see it because it doesn't fit the lies they put out. This is NOT new...

4 posted on 11/24/2013 12:21:18 PM PST by GOPJ ("Remember who the real enemy is... ")
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To: SeekAndFind

“GAME” — how the he11 can anyone call this a game. Maybe we should just start randomly shooting blacks and call it a game — think that would be accepted as a “game”. What is happening is assault and battery done by thugs, mostly black who don’t think anything will happen to them because of the Black in the White House and DOJ. Obama seems to have an opinion about everything that happens with “white on black” but is always silent when it is black on white. What a sorry excuse for a president


5 posted on 11/24/2013 12:23:10 PM PST by falcon99
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To: SeekAndFind

Time to play the “wood shampoo game”.


6 posted on 11/24/2013 12:23:31 PM PST by mylife (Ted Cruz understands the law, and he does not fear the unlawful.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Knockout have surfaced in the past week, including an assault in San Diego, the first reported on the West Coast.

The first 'reported' isn't the same as 'first happening'. The knockout game is one more reason to hate liberal elites... they kept the lid on this horror to protect votes for democrats.

7 posted on 11/24/2013 12:24:26 PM PST by GOPJ ("Remember who the real enemy is... ")
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To: SeekAndFind

Hate crime (to belabor the obvious)


8 posted on 11/24/2013 12:24:50 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (The Lion of Judah will roar again if you give him a big hug and a cheer and mean it. See my page.)
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To: Arm_Bears

If this becomes even more “popular” than it already is, and Mayors like the recently elected Bill De Blasio of NYC are going to clip the power of the city cops, I expect an increase of the number of vigilantes in our streets — people who have no choice but to protect themselves ( remember Bernard Goetz? )


9 posted on 11/24/2013 12:25:26 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

youths used to either go to school or work, or both.

but with the new Transformed Amerika, they (and their parents, if they have any) sit at home collecting sixteen different types of welfare

and for entertainment they go out and try to kill the rest of us in the streets

this is what we get for voting to undermine American and Judeo-Christian values, and our economy


10 posted on 11/24/2013 12:25:26 PM PST by faithhopecharity
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To: GOPJ

My guess... just a guess, YMMV... stuff like this probably has been going on since rowdies got too much ale in pre-revolutionary America. For which they’d be whipped at the whipping post or something like that. But little of it tied to racial tensions until modern times.


11 posted on 11/24/2013 12:27:21 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (The Lion of Judah will roar again if you give him a big hug and a cheer and mean it. See my page.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Thrill muggings?
12 posted on 11/24/2013 12:28:48 PM PST by oldbrowser (The debt limit is the emergency brake on government spending)
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To: oldbrowser

A mugger at least tries to steal something from you. These “knockouts” just do it for the heck of it.


13 posted on 11/24/2013 12:29:34 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

This ‘game’ has been around a while. In about 1989 or 1990 I was walking just outside the French Quarter in New Orleans. A few yutes of color were walking towards me on the sidewalk. One of them, a full foot taller than I sucker punched me completely to my surprise while another reached for my back pocket. I didn’t ‘knock out’ but instead came up with my knee as hard as I could into the tall guys groin. As he buckled over I hit him as hard as I could across the face with both hands clasped together and then pulled out my Buck knife. They all backed off and it was over except for my anger increasingly raging inside of me for the next couple of hours. I was lucky they did not have a gun and they certainly wouldn’t be here today if I was packing as I always do now. That was the last time I ever went to that $hit hole of a city.


14 posted on 11/24/2013 12:31:49 PM PST by Carthego delenda est
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To: SeekAndFind
Where is Paul Kersey when you need him ...


15 posted on 11/24/2013 12:32:52 PM PST by CapnJack
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To: SeekAndFind

20 years or more it’s been going on an the media finally “discovers” it.

They saw obama on the ropes and decided it was a good story to run with.


16 posted on 11/24/2013 12:33:37 PM PST by Right Wing Assault (What happened to my tagline??)
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To: SeekAndFind

Shouldn’t this be posted under “Sports”?


17 posted on 11/24/2013 12:34:31 PM PST by Zuben Elgenubi (NOPe to GOPe)
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To: Carthego delenda est

RE: That was the last time I ever went to that $hit hole of a city.

Most of these folks have left New Orleans since Katrina devastated it.... only to spread their moral virus to where they relocated to.


18 posted on 11/24/2013 12:34:33 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

This is happening because these people are desperate, economically deprived and on the verge of starving....

Wuht?


19 posted on 11/24/2013 12:36:20 PM PST by SaxxonWoods (....Let It Burn...)
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To: Arm_Bears

This is Trayvon Martin making a successful assault, and getting away with it. Because that was clearly the inspiration here, and these youths are just copycats of the original assault.

But nobody wants to call this the racial crime that it is.

It has many of the elements of train dodging, stepping off the track at the last possible moment, or of center-line road chicken, seeing who will swerve first.

“Catch me if you can.”


20 posted on 11/24/2013 12:36:35 PM PST by alloysteel (The Internet, a most exquisite system by which to confound and muddle any reasonable dialogue.)
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