A Native American autistic man claims that a fellow native American who was appointed the executive director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education in December 2011 spat on him and brutally beat him for wearing A Washington Redskins sweater.
Barrett Dahl, 28, claims he was attending a Native American gathering in Washington, DC in October 2015 when William Mendoza, the Obama appointee, approached him. Dahl told KFOR, “He comes to me and says you’re a ‘weetard’ for wearing a Redskins shirt. He says where are you from that you’re such a ‘weetard,’ you don’t understand that you’re offending me?”
Dahl continued, ”He spits right in my face. The boy sitting next to me sees it. He doesn’t say anything. So, I get up and leave the ballroom to get the police,” adding that Mendoza pursued him to an escalator and beat him up, leaving Dahl with a fractured arm, broken teeth and a black eye.
Mendoza had a different version of events, telling News9 he politely asked about “INJUN PIMP” being emblazoned on the back of Dahl’s shirt, prompting Dahl to explode: ‘I don’t have to (expletive) explain (expletive) to you. If you want to step outside and take this outside, I’d be happy to explain it to you.” (Dahl said his shirt said “INJUN PLAYER.”)
Mendoza said that he offered Dahl his hand after seeing him on the escalator and apologized for upsetting him. Mendoza stated that it was at that point that Dahl attacked him. He insisted, “He was holding a cup in his hand, at which point he threw its contents that was the smell of coffee and was hot, but not scalding. He then punched me in the face (right cheek). I tried to grab him but we both fell.”
Dahl, who is an Oregon native from the Sac and Fox Nation, is planning to sue for the $40,000 in medical expenses incurred from the altercation. Mendoza’s lawyer says Mendoza, who hails from the Oglala-Sicangu Lakota people, will sue Dahl if he “continue(s) to malign” him.
Dahl concluded, “What bothers me the most about this, first off, we’ve lost everything we have and he’s lost nothing. He’s kept his job, his home, his family. And, second off, there’s not a doubt in my mind that this person would do the same thing to a young child who was wearing a Redskins shirt.”