WESTFIELD – Shirley Hinds, mother of defendant Adrian B. Hinds, said after court on Thursday that the news reports have gotten it wrong.
“He’s not a criminal, and I’m not a criminal,” she said.
Adrian Hinds, 25, is charged with attacking his neighbors and their dog with a hammer on the morning of March 23 at Southwood Acres, located at 342 Southwick Road, where he and the victims lived. He faces two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon with serious bodily injury, two counts of armed assault to murder and one charge of animal cruelty, according to court logs. He has been held without the right to bail pending a dangerousness hearing.
“When I moved in, we were the only black family in the section where we lived,” Shirley Hinds said. “It’s been bad for us out there.”
Hinds said both she and her son have had their tires cut, and they have experienced other forms of intimidation, including threats. They lived there for two years.
“I couldn’t believe this stuff still exists in America. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have moved there,” she said, adding that they were getting ready to move out before this happened. “That stuff will do a thing on you.”
Hinds said she was not there on the day of the attack, so she doesn’t know what happened. She wants people to tell the truth, and not act like everything was “Jim Dandy.”
“I came up here with a decent young man, and now he’s locked up,” Hinds, who moved out of her apartment over the weekend, said. “I wish I had gotten out of here soon enough.”
At Thursday’s dangerousness hearing, Attorney Jiacheng Yu from the Committee for Public Counsel Services made a motion to continue the hearing until Monday, and a second motion to make the victims available at the hearing.
The case was continued, and Judge Philip Contant took the motion to produce the victims under advisement, after the district attorney’s office said the Commonwealth would oppose the motion.
