Washington State Soldier-on-Soldier Stabbing Not Called a Hate Crime

20 year old army Spc. Tevin Geike stationed at at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, was stabbed to death by a fellow soldier Saturday night in what was originally believed to be a hate crime.

However now a prosecutor in the case is saying that the soldier was killed for no apparent reason, ruling out race as a factor.

Just to lay the groundwork, Geike and two friends who were all white were out Saturday night, when a car with 5 black men inside heckled the 3 – one of who shouted “cracker” out of the window.

According to this:

Jeremiah Hill, 23, was arraigned Tuesday on charges he killed Army Spc. Tevin Geike. He was held on $2 million bail.
Two other soldiers were charged as accessories.
“This was a senseless and sad murder where a soldier killed a fellow soldier for no reason,” Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said in a release.
Cops originally suspected the vicious killing was a hate crime.
Hill was among five black men in a car who heckled Geike and two white friends early Saturday morning, police said.
Matthew Barnes, a soldier and friend of Geike, said they were walking when the men shouted “cracker” out the window, KIRO TV reported.
Barnes said he shouted back about respecting combat veterans and that the car turned around.
Lindquist said the two groups argued, but calmed down when the men from the car realized Geike’s group was active-duty soldiers like them.
It seemed like the shouting match was over when Hill attacked, Lindquist said.
The 23-year-old Chicago native wrapped Geike in a “bear hug” and stabbed him twice, the prosecutor said.
An autopsy shows the knife piercing his heart.
“He died like a dog,” Kimberly Turnipseed told ABC news on Tuesday.
Turnipseed’s daughter was a close friend of Geike's, and she considered the 20-year-old from South Carolina a son.
"Where's the outrage?" Turnipseed said. "If this had been the other way around — black victims — then this would have been a hate crime."
Lindquist said the facts didn’t support a hate crime charge. Two of Hill’s accused accomplices told investigators race wasn’t a factor and Geike’s friends said there weren’t any more slurs after the initial heckling, Lindquist said.
Police also concluded race wasn’t a motive, but didn’t elaborate.

So just to be clear, if race wasn’t the motive for the killing, then what was? The 5 black men in the car were out joyriding looking for someone to kill?

Clearly uttering the word “cracker” denotes the assailants were heckling the 3 white men because of their race. And while you might make the case that Barnes’ retort to the passing car may have provoked the 5 black men to turn around and take up the challenge, one has to look at what precipitated the attack in the first place. Despite there being no other racial slurs uttered.

Either way, dead is dead, but it’s confounding how a prosecutor is quick to rule out race as a factor in the killing.

Given how upside down justice is in this country, had it been the other way around, race hucksters would have been all over this.

So far, the only sound I hear is crickets.