Hate crime suspect behind bars
Toolbox
By PATRICK McARDLE STAFF WRITER - Published: February 20, 2009
BENNINGTON – A Woodford man was ordered held without bail Thursday after being arraigned for a hate crime.
Police said Donald R. O'Dell, 45, used a racial epithet while assaulting a man at a Route 9 hotel in Woodford on Wednesday night.
O'Dell was charged with aggravated assault with a weapon in Bennington District Court on Thursday. Language was added to the charge that says the crime "was maliciously motivated by the victim's actual race." O'Dell was charged as a habitual offender, which could result in a sentence of life in prison.
In an affidavit, Vermont State Police Trooper James Wright said police spoke with Derek Okundaye, 38, at the Walk in the Woods Motel in Woodford around 10:20 p.m. Wednesday.
According to Wright, Okundaye was bleeding from a "large, baseball-sized welt" on his head and also had injuries on his left arm and shoulder.
Okundaye told police he had gone outside to speak to O'Dell, who was driving a snow-plowing truck, because he didn't want O'Dell to push snow in front of his home. O'Dell became confrontational, according to Okundaye, and Okundaye began to leave.
"When he turned around to walk away, he was hit in the back of the head by a crowbar," Wright said in the affidavit.
Police interviewed several other people at the hotel. One said she heard Okundaye calling for help and saw O'Dell chasing Okundaye with a metal object in his hands. Another said he saw O'Dell hitting Okundaye two or three times with a metal object.
Wright said O'Dell told police that Okundaye had punched him in the face twice. O'Dell said Okundaye lunged at him again, slipped and hit his head on the snow plow.
According to Wright, O'Dell told emergency dispatchers that Okundaye had a knife, but witnesses told police Okundaye didn't have a weapon.
Wright said Okundaye was interviewed a second time at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, where Okundaye was being treated, and Okundaye said O'Dell had used a racial epithet.
O'Dell, who pleaded not guilty to the charge against him on Thursday, is being held in Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland.
Judge John Wesley said while there were "conflicting accounts, this seems to be a particularly vicious outburst of significant violence that was barely provoked and seemed to have a component of racial or ethnic animus."
Bennington County State's Attorney Erica Marthage said her office had not prosecuted a hate crime since she took office in 2007. In 2003, a Manchester teenager was accused of scratching a swastika on a Jewish classmate's car.
O'Dell's previous felony convictions include driving while intoxicated in 2003, grand larceny in 1996 and burglary and attempted burglary in 1991.
patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com