Destinee Mangum summoned the courage to go on television to thank the families of the two good Samaritans who lost their lives protecting her and her friend from the attack of a white supremacist on Friday in Portland.
The teenager saw two men murdered as they defended her from racist abuse and thanked the pair who saved her. Ricky Best, a 53-year-old Army veteran who worked as a technician for the city of Portland, died at the scene. Taliesin Meche, a 23-year-old economics graduate who had just started a job as an environmental consultant, was pronounced dead at hospital.
Destinee, 16, was traveling with her hijab-wearing friend on a tram in Portland, Oregon, on Friday when she was accosted by Jeremy Christian, a known white supremacist with a violent criminal history, who began hurling racist abuse at the girls. Three men intervened to protect them, and Christian stabbed two of the men to death.
In tears, Mangum told Fox affiliate KPTV this weekend that she wanted “to say thank you to the people who put their life on the line for me, because they didn’t even know me.”
“I just want to forget about it and not even remember it happened,” Mangum said the video. “Because it’s just haunting me.”
Mangum and a friend were riding a public train in Portland on Friday when they were verbally assaulted by Christian, who told them to “go back to Saudi Arabia.” Meche and Best were killed when they intervened to protect the two teenagers, and a third man, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, was seriously injured.
“He told us to go back to Saudi Arabia. He told us that we shouldn’t be here and to get out of his country. He was just telling us that we basically weren’t anything and that we should just kill ourselves,” Mangum said.
This is the moment that Meche, Best, and Fletcher intervened. “We turned around while they were fighting, and he just started stabbing people … and we just started running for our lives,” Mangum said.
Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, described the two murdered men as heroes.
“Two men lost their lives and another was injured for doing the right thing, standing up for people they didn’t know against hatred,” Wheeler said. “Their actions were brave and selfless, and should serve as an example and inspiration to us all. They are heroes.”
