911 call from kidnapped man ends with extremist group leader arrested, Georgia cops say

Alison Cutler
·2 min read

A 911 call from someone who claimed to have been kidnapped led to the arrest of the leader of a revolutionary extremist group, police in Georgia told media outlets.

Officers also found the body of an 18-year-old who appeared to have shot himself in the head, Fayetteville police said in a news release.

Officers got a call on July 20 from a person who claimed he was being held against his will in a garage by an organization — later identified as the Black Hammer Party — in Fayetteville, investigators told FOX5.

When police arrived at the home, they noticed a hand waving through the garage window, FOX5 reported. The SWAT standoff lasted for hours.

Two men were arrested in connection with the incident, according to police. Augustus C. Romain, 36, and Xavier H. Rushin, 21.

Both men are members of the Black Hammer Party, investigators told WSBTV.

Romain goes by the name Gazi Kodzo within the Black Hammer Party, which was established in 2019 and has said it has an alliance with the Proud Boys, a classified hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 11Alive reported.

Romain faces the following charges, according to police.

  • Aggravated sodomy

  • Two counts of conspiracy to commit a felony

  • Two counts of false imprisonment (party to a crime)

  • Two counts of kidnapping (party to a crime)

  • Two counts of aggravated assault (party to a crime)

  • Two counts of criminal street gang activity

Rushing faces similar charges, not including the sodomy charge, according to police.

Officers found a deceased 18-year-old man inside the residence with an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,” police said in the release.

W.F. Thomas, an extremist expert, told WSBTV that the Black Hammer Party states that it helps people of color.

“In reality, this functions like a cult,” Thomas told the news outlet, adding that the 18-year-old “Is a victim who was preyed upon by Augustus Romain.”

The Black Hammer Party wrote its own account of the incident online and claimed that the 18-year-old member was “shot and killed by the police.”

In the past, the organization has referred to Holocaust survivor Anne Frank as a “bleach devil” and tweeted about burning the historical figure’s journal, FOX News reported.

“We are staunchly anti-white and believe all white people have benefited from colonialism,” Black Hammer Organization general Secretary Anco Nahuel told FOX News in a statement in 2021. “We aim to expose how white Jewish (vs say Ethiopian Jews) people despite their historical oppression currently participate in colonialism. (Palestine, Harlem, etc).”

A former founding member of the Black Hammer Party, Robert Quiñones, said that the organization went from “a vehicle of liberation to one of abuse and toxicity,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

An investigation is ongoing into the incident on July 20, Fayetteville Police said.

Fayetteville is about 20 miles south of Atlanta.

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