For LaDonna Horne, the pain won’t go away.<\/p>\n
She cries long and hard each night so she can appear bright and strong when she visits her comatose son.<\/p>\n
“He’s fighting back. He’s still fighting for his life,” Horne said of her 26-year-old son, DaShawn, an African-American man from Kent, who was brutally beaten, allegedly at the hands of an aluminum baseball bat-swinging Auburn man, on Jan. 20. “He’s doing occupational therapy, coughing. He’s breathing on his own.<\/p>\n
“He hears us, though. He’s hears all these people, the prayers. He feels them around him,” LaDonna Horne said. “My son is still alive. He has a second chance at life, and we’re all fighting with him. He’s going to make it. He’s going to pull through.”<\/p>\n
Surrounded by family and friends, an emotional Horne turned angry and disappointed after Julian Tuimauga, 18, pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and malicious harassment, the state’s statute for hate crimes, at the man’s arraignment Monday morning in King County Superior Court at Kent’s Maleng Regional Justice Center.<\/p>\n
King County prosecutors and Auburn Police have called the beating a hate crime attack.<\/p>\n
Tuimauga, who is listed as Asian in court documents, is in county jail on $500,000 bail. The trial-setting date is March 5, although attorneys will ask for more time to prepare the case.<\/p>\n
DaShawn Horne remains in an intensive care unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with a traumatic brain injury.<\/p>\n
The not guilty plea left LaDonna Horne scrambling for words.<\/p>\n
“Can I yell? I’m angry. I’m upset. I mean, what else is there to say? LaDonna Horne said outside the courtroom afterward. “He should have pleaded guilty. I mean, the evidence is clear. … Justice is going to be served for DaShawn. Maybe it’s going to take a little time, but he’s going to serve his time.”<\/p>\n
LaDonna Horne’s brother, Rodney King, had stronger words for the defendant.<\/p>\n
“His intention was clear when he tried to kill my nephew,” King said. “He’s so cowardly that he couldn’t fess up to the fact that he was guilty of a crime. … If you’re man enough to pull a bat and play Mark McGwire on my nephew’s head, you should be man enough to plead guilty to what you did. Own up to what you did. It’s undeniable what you did.<\/p>\n
“That was his chance. He could have faced it like a man,” King added. “He could have looked back at us and said, ‘I’m sorry for the pain that your family is facing right now. Honor, I plead guilty for what I did.’ “<\/p>\n
Defendants rarely plead guilty at arraignments. It can takes months or even years before a case goes to trial, and sometimes defendants plead guilty before a trial.<\/p>\n