Video taken of the exchange between the suspect, who authorities now identify as McCleish Christmas Benham, 27, of Shelbyville Tenn., received millions of views online as the clearly inebriated suspect kicked his victim in the groin and hit him in the head at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport last Thursday.
Police said Benham initially insulted a gate agent who called authorities. He then cursed at the agent and informed the employee he had "100 drinks," officers wrote in the police report, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.Benham then punched a passenger who was wearing a pink and white striped shirt in the right eye and called him a gay slur. The suspect then started to threaten another person who tried to intervene, police said."Queers is what I am upset about," Benham screamed to the peacekeeper who donned a cowboy hat. "This f----t right here!"
Benham then screams "shove it up your a--, man, see how that feels!" to his victim.
An airport officer arrived and Benham kicked the man in the pink shirt in the groin and punched him on the top of his head. Benham was then immediately tackled by the officer and five bystanders, police said.
"This is America — that's why," Benham said while being held on the ground when asked why he assaulted him. "It's the same reason you get to live, to breathe, to walk black. You know what I'm talking about."His victim declined medical attention and Benham was charged with simple assault and public intoxication, the newspaper reported.
One of the bystanders that tackled Benham injured his ankle but did not miss his flight, police said.
Andrew Kennedy, the passenger who shot the video, called Benham "extremely troubled" in the video's "Basically, I was waiting for my next flight at gate C-30 with my family, heard a loud and seemingly escalating commotion, then walked over and pressed record on my phone," he wrote. "That is it. The rest is you seeing and hearing what I did so I really have no other information on what started it or what it was about."
