A white man in Alabama is facing murder charges after he allegedly fatally shot a black man in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel.
AL.com reports that 22-year-old Bryan Patrick Hancock was taken into custody by police on Thursday night after he shot 40-year-old Randy Young in the head.
Witnesses told police that the two men were engaged in some kind of dispute in the Cracker Barrel parking lot, and that Hancock at one point yelled a racial slur at Young. The situation escalated quickly from there, and culminated in Hancock shooting Young.
Young was taken to a nearby hospital and he died from the gunshot wound on Saturday night.
Hancock's stepfather, a black man named Steven Chatman, told AL.com that he could not believe his stepson would be motivated by racism to kill Young.
"It’s absolutely not that," he insisted. "I've been his father since he was 8 years old and he’s not a racist. There’s nothing about him that is racist."
Chatman also claimed that this "was completely a self-defense situation" and insisted that "the truth will come out."
