Impressing Strangers

Bullies tend to be braggarts. And sometimes being a bully who wants to impress others by recounting their exploits to a presumed appreciative audience can have repercussions that the brashly vicious moron who would conduct an unprovoked attack upon an entirely innocent person, feeling himself clever in the process could use some help in restoring a sense of reality to his conscience.

On November 24 in the town of Katy, in Texas, 27-year-old Conrad Barrett approached a 79-year-old black man with a greeting. "How's it going, man?" he asked. And then, while videoing the event, he engaged in what was termed a "knockout game" attack. He sucker-punched the unsuspecting elderly man. In the video a "loud smack" is heard, the victim falls, a laugh is heard and a voice says "knockout".

The elderly man by then may or may not have been aware that the young man who brutally assailed him had fled the scene, in a vehicle. He was left lying on the ground. In the attack the man lost three teeth. He required surgery to repair his jaw, broken in two places. The 79-year-old man who might never have imagined that he would be the butt of someone's racist amusement was hospitalized for over four days.

And the imbecile who attacked the old man went about shopping his video to what he assumed would be an appreciative audience. Twelve days after the attack, Conrad Barrett showed off his video to a couple he had met at a restaurant. He was trying to impress a man and a woman, with no idea that the man was an off-duty investigator. Did they know about the knockout game, he asked?

After viewing the video, the investigator flagged down a uniformed officer and escorted him to Conrad Barrett. While Barrett's face doesn't appear on the video his voice was matched to the one in the video. The couple informed investigators that Barrett was wearing the same shorts and shoes as the person shooting the video.

Conrad Barrett was arrested on federal hate-crimes charges. Conscience? Forget it!

This booking photo released by the Harris County Sheriff's Office shows Conrad Barrett after he was arrested for DWI in 2003.  
AP Photo/Harris County Sheriff's Office, via Houston Chronicle