SEATTLE, Wash. — Rich asked not to use his last name. But he agreed to describe his injuries.
"I got eight stitches over here," he said, touching his left eyebrow, then his right. "I got this over here. Like my jaw is messed up. I can barely eat and stuff like that."
He says it happened as he was leaving a pickup game of basketball at Cal Anderson Park last Friday night.
"And then this group came through," said Rich. "They were like rowdy. You can tell they were drinking and stuff."
One person in the group tried to rob someone. He stepped in. That is when one of the white men called him a racist name.
"You know while I was telling him to address that, I guess another guy came up from behind and just punched me," he said. "And then they were kicking on me and stuff, calling me N----- and stuff."
When Seattle Police arrived, they actually witnessed the suspect attacking Rich.
The two officers chased the suspect. He tried to jump a fence. But they stopped him. And he assaulted them, too.
Rich said he was so disoriented he did not mention the racist nature of the attack to the police officers.
"I basically blacked out during the situation, also," he said. "Like I had a concussion."
But he has been trying ever since to alert them to it.
"Cal Anderson, Broadway is supposed to be the melting pot," Rich said. "That's the last place in Washington I would have thought I would have to deal with racism."
The suspect has been identified as 23-year-old Dylan Hall of Seattle.
He is being held on $255,000 bail. He already had several outstanding cases against him.
Seattle police tell us investigators will now look into the allegation that what happened at Cal Anderson Park was a hate crime, too.