Frank Whitcher
Frank Whitcher
Update, 12:45 p.m. Sunday: Despite some skeptics who suggest he was never beaten and robbed, motorist Frank Whitcher insisted Sunday that he was in fact beaten and robbed on Detroit's east side on June 24 after he was involved in a car crash.
"It's all true," he told Deadline Detroit on Sunday in a phone interview.
Fox 2's Dave Spencer interviewed Whitcher and reported the incident on Friday, and posted a link to a GoFundMe page. Deadline Detroit publioshed a story Saturday, based on information from Fox 2 and the donations drive.
But later Saturday, the link to the Fox 2 story was disabled and Alan Gunner Lindbloom, the friend who created the GoFundMe page, writes in an update:
ATTENTION!!! Just so everyone knows, Fox pulled this story down because people from the "community" where this happened have been pestering the station all afternoon, claiming no such assault happened. Really?
Lindbloom insists the story is true.
Fox 2 says Sunday that it removed the post and video while trying to confirm more information.
Whitcher, who resides in Macomb County, tells Deadline Detroit that he was driving to a friend's home in Detroit last weekend when he felt his chest tighten. He thought he might be having a heart attack. He ended up crashing into a car with a mother and daughter.
He said the mother came out of her car, "screaming and yelling." As people gathered, he said the irate parent yelled: "Shoot that white motherfucker."
He said people started reaching in the car, punching him and pulling his hair. He said they also took about $50, along with his glasses, and told him he was going to die. He said as he was being transported into the ambulance, he told a police officer at the scene that he was assaulted, but she never included it in a report. He said the EMT workers also told police of the assault.
Detroit Police Sgt. Adam Madera confirms Sunday to Deadline that the officers didn't mention anything about an assault in the report. However, during a further check on Sunday, Madera found that Whitcher did tell a 911 dispatcher on the second call that day that he was being assaulted.
Madera said Sunday night that he followed up with officers in the case, who said Whitcher never mentioned anything about an assault.
Deadline was working Sunday to get the fire department's version.
Whitcher said he has been bombarded via Facebook messenger with people accusing him of being a liar.
"I just keep deleting them," he said.
Some skepticism on social media revolved around about the GoFundMe page, which Whitcher says he had nothing to do with creating. He said his friend, Alan Gunner Lindbloom, created the page to help him. He said he was helping Lindbloom launch a clothing line last weekend at an event at the Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights hours before the crash.
Some people on social media made skeptical comments about Lindbloom, who served time in state prison for extortion , armed robbery and weapons and was paroled last summer.
The website, Gangster Inc., wrote about Lindbloom's novel released in April titled "To Be King, Volume I," and described him as being " part of part of Detroit's notorious Tocco crime family."
Original post, Saturday:
Frank Whitcher, a disabled cancer survivor was beaten and robbed a week ago after his car crashed on Detroit's east side around Schoenherr and E. State Fair, Fox 2 reports.
"That night there was a lot of people in that area that just had a lot of hate in them and they wanted me gone," Whitcher tells Dave Spencer, who reports that details of the accident are murky,
A GoFundMe page says that Whitcher had driven a friend home, had a seizure and got into a terrible traffic accident.
"While incapacitated, barely conscious and pinned in his demolished car, he was attacked, beaten, and robbed...for nearly twenty minutes by a gang of thugs...till police arrived, truly lucky to have escaped with his life! His wallet, all of his money, and his prescription glasses were stolen."
"(They said) 'You f'd up, we're going to kill you, you are going to die here tonight.'" Whitcher told Fox 2.
He called for help on his cell phone.
"This is a man who lives solely off disability, yet would give the shirt off his back for anyone in need," writes his friend Alan Gunner Lindbloom on the GoFundMe page. "I am hoping and praying that anyone reading this will be generous enough to donate a few dollars to help him recoup his losses. Nothing can make up for the pain and suffering he is now in or will surely be in for months to come, but maybe a few dollars will help him get things back in order once he gets out of the hosiptal and begins the healing process. Thank you all and God bless. This is a real thing, not a fake scam. Frank is a great guy and he needs our help. Thank you again."
As of Saturday morning, the GoFundMe campaign has raised $2,555.
