Nearly two months after the viral Alabama brawl that took the internet by storm, Dameion Pickett, the dock worker that was caught in the middle of all of fighting is breaking his silence in a new exclusive interview with Good Morning America.
Pickett says that he is the lead deckhand at the Harriot II, and he revealed what took place that day to make all of the chaos occur. Pickett told Robin Roberts that he was just “just doing my job” and was “just in shock” when he was violently attacked.
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“I didn’t expect this to happen at work today,” Pickett said. “I was just expecting another peaceful, nice cruise.” Pickett says as a dinner cruise was ending there was another boat that was parked illegally preventing the riverboat from docking safely. “We could have docked, but we would end up hitting a couple of those boats and be responsible for it,” Pickett said. “Everybody was yelling, “Could y’all move y’all boat?” Pickett added. That’s when Pickett said the captain ordered him to just go ahead and move the boat himself. “Really just moved it about one, two, four– four steps to the right, that’s it,” he said. “I was, like, ‘I’m just doing my job … After we dock, we don’t mind y’all staying there but not at this time while we’re trying to dock,'” he added.
Pickett then refers to what we all saw in the viral video when a white man was seen walking up on him and another came out of no where and took a swing at him so he said threw his hat off and had to defend himself. “This man just put his hand on me. I was, like … it’s my job, but I’m still defending myself at the same time. So when he touched me, I was, like, ‘It’s on,'” Pickett said. In the video, a young man was also seen swimming to the altercation to try and stop the madness. He also, was interviewed and spoke about the incident. Hamilton-Rudolph, a 16-year-old who was only on his second week on the job said, “Everybody was just recording. No one helped,” Hamilton-Rudolph said. “So I couldn’t just watch and sit around and just let him get beat on while everybody else is just recording and watching.”
After the incident took place, Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed said in a statement that several people involved in the fighting Saturday evening have been detained. “Last night, the Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job. Warrants have been signed and justice will be served.” He added, “This was an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred. As our police department investigates these intolerable actions, we should not become desensitized to violence of any kind in our community. Those who choose violence will be held accountable by our criminal justice system.”