'Magic Man' assaulted on Ithaca Commons by college guys Saturday night (May 9)
Hi all — apologies for posting this here, but I'm not able to post directly to r/Ithaca and I feel strongly that this concerns everyone on this reddit or we should all at least be aware of it.
I was walking down Ithaca Commons Sat. night (May 9), a little after midnight, and obviously given the time and day the area between Moonies and Bookies was swarming with people. There was a group of white college-aged guys (about 10-15 of them) surrounding 'Magic Man' (his real name is William Metro, he's a magician who works on the Commons), yelling at him aggressively, heckling him, and filming him, calling him a p***phile, while one another guy was getting up in his face and physically provoking him. A bunch of other college-aged people were just watching from the sides. At some point this guy shoved Metro hard, he pushed back, and a fight broke out, with more people joining in and beating up on him, although one guy did try to hold back the first aggressor. Metro ended up on the ground and eventually the guys ran off down State Street.
It's really hard to express just how disgusting and evil this was to witness — the violence, the idiotic cruelty of it all, the glee of the guys watching and filming everything on their smartphones, the fact that /no one else/ tried to talk to these guys or restrain them. I don't know if these guys were from Cornell or Ithaca College, but it honestly felt like watching a modern-day l**** mob.
If these were your friends or people you knew, if you ever see something like this happening, I hope to God that you would have the backbone to say something.