Teen beaten 'for enslaving our people,' police say Suspects charged; one at large Tuesday night

Two men accused of beating a teenager and blaming it on white oppression were charged Tuesday with a hate crime and first-degree robbery.

Prosecutors allege Ahmed Mohamed, who is black, and Jonathan Baquiring, who is Asian, had blood on them when an officer stopped them shortly after the May 25 attack.

The Washington State Crime Lab returned the DNA test results to a Seattle Police detective Sept. 8. Baquiring was booked into King County Jail at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday. Mohamed is at large with a warrant for his arrest, prosecutors said late Tuesday.

The victim, Shane McClellan, 16, told police he was walking to his West Seattle home from a friend's house about 2 a.m. the morning of the attack when he saw two men at the top of some stairs. They asked him for a light. As he got closer, they surrounded him and took items from his pockets. McClellan tried to push them off and was punched.

"Officer (Ryan) Blake noted in his report that Mr. McClellan was dazed and that his face, hands and shirt were covered in blood," Detective Suzanne Moore wrote in a probable-cause document. "He also noted Mr. McClellan('s) face, ears, head and back were swollen and covered in welts and that his teeth were chipped in several places."

Seattlepi.com does not typically name juvenile assault victims. But McClellan spoke about the attack with our news partner, KOMO/4, and his family has identified him through several Seattle media outlets.

McClellan told police the suspects forced him up the stairs to a dead end and held him against his will for several hours.

"During this time they beat him with their hands and feet, whipped him with his own belt, burned him with a lit cigarette, poured energy beer on him and urinated on him," Moore wrote.

The teen told police that if he yelled, the Asian man would display a knife and threaten to slit his throat if he kept screaming.

"Mr. McClellan said during the assault both suspects made comments like, 'the white man has kept us down' and 'this is for enslaving our people,'" Moore wrote.

The teen never saw a gun, but told police his attackers threatened to "'cap' him" if he looked up, according to court documents. He eventually looked up from the area where they shoved his head and noticed they were gone. McClellan walked to the street, where he found someone to help him.

Blake, the responding officer, went to the dead end in the 7700 block of 14th Avenue Southwest and found blood smears on a guardrail, cigarette butts and an empty Four Loko energy beer.

As he was driving from the scene, he saw an Asian man and a black man in their 20s walking together in the 1600 block of Southwest Holden Street, about two blocks from the crime scene.

One tried to conceal a Four Loko energy beer in his jacket pocket and one had a pack of Marlboro Reds, the same type of cigarette found at the attack site, police said. Both had dried blood on them.

McClellan couldn't identify them then because he had been taken to Harborview Medical Center. Days later, police say he picked Mohamed out of a lineup, saying he looked about 65 percent like the suspect. He identified Baquiring from the lineup immediately, according to court documents.

The crime lab test confirmed the blood removed from Baquiring's hands matched McClellan's blood profile, according to court documents. Police say the swab collected from Mohamed's hand was a mixture from two individuals.

"Shane McClellan is included as a potential contributor in this mixture," Moore wrote. "Based on the U.S. population, it is estimated that 1 in 8.6 thousand people could be a contributor to this mixed profile."

Prosecutors say the only motivation for the defendants appears to have been money and McClellan's race.

Mohamed was convicted this year for carrying a concealed weapon but his sentence was deferred, according to court documents. Baquiring has no known criminal history.

Mohamed is 5-foot-10 and 145 pounds, according to court documents. Seattle police have not released photos of the suspects.