Georgia resident Alex Michael Ramos faces years in prison for his role in last year’s beating of a black man in Charlottesville, Va., in the chaos following the Unite the Right rally.
Ramos, a 34-year-old resident of Jackson, Ga., was one of several white men caught on video beating DeAndre Harris in a parking garage Aug, 12, 2017. Harris had fled into the garage to escape the mob, but he fell to the ground as blows rained down upon him.
In the video, Ramos, seen wearing a white undershirt and a red "Make America Great Again" cap, runs into frame and swings his fist down at Harris' head. After the fray, Ramos returned to Georgia, sat in his car and recorded a long Facebook live video reveling in the violence.
“Yeah, I’m glad I stomped some a** out there,” he said. “You hurt my people I guess we hurt you back.”
Judge Richard E. Moore last week sentenced Ramos to six years in prison and three years supervised probation, citing his Facebook comments as evidence of the "evil" intent, according to The Daily Progress of Charlottesville.
A jury in May deliberated less than an hour before finding Ramos guilty of malicious wounding in the incident that left Harris with a broken wrist and a deep wound to his head that required staples to close.
Prior to attending the rally, Ramos associated with the Georgia Security Force III%, a metro Atlanta, far-right militia. Ramos appeared in a group photo of militia members and failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams at an anti-Sharia march two months prior to Unite The Right.
Following the Charlottesville rally, the militia group said Ramos had left the group and was now affiliated with the Proud Boys — a “Western chauvinist organization” associated with white supremacist demonstrations. Prior to that, Ramos reportedly associated himself with other anti-government protest groups, such as the Occupy movement and the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
Ramos, who identifies himself as of Puerto Rican descent, was born in The Bronx, New York, and spent time in Florida before moving with his family to Georgia.
In his Facebook live video, he repeatedly claimed he was not a white supremacist, blaming the Charlottesville Police for the violence during the rally.
“They were pushing them into opposition protesters so that they could be harmed,” he said, apparently responding to comments on his video. “You call me a f***ing white supremacist? I’m f***ing Spanish. I was raised in the (expletive) ghetto, a**holes.”
It is not clear whether Ramos will appeal the sentence. Jake Joyce, Harris’s attorney, declined to comment on the record.
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