Amelia Schafer
ICT + Rapid City Journal
RAPID CITY, S.D. – For 13-year-old Reuben Randle, Sept. 26 was supposed to be a normal day. He’d finish school, then football practice, and then met up with his friends at the community park in his Box Elder, South Dakota, neighborhood, their favorite spot.
After he met two of his friends, a woman began yelling at the boys, then moments later a man rushed out and began attacking Randle, according to Box Elder police reports provided to ICT by the boy’s mother, Trivia Afraid of Lightning-Craddock.
Wesley Cale Jr., 38, was arrested on Sept. 26 and has been charged with two counts of felony child abuse and two counts of simple assault with intent to cause bodily injury.
Alicia Cale, who witnessed the assault and walked Randle home afterward, does not appear to have any charges against her.
The attack left Randle with a concussion, sprained jaw socket, multiple abrasions and a sprained wrist, all rendering him unable to play football for the rest of the season. He missed homecoming, one of his favorite events, and has missed school due to countless different necessary appointments, his mother said.
In the wake of the incident and the trauma it has caused, the family is asking that Cale’s charges be elevated from simple to aggravated assault and that his wife be charged as well.
“There’s no way to explain why this individual did what he did,” Afraid of Lightning-Craddock said. “My son keeps asking, ‘Why did this happen to me? Why didn’t his wife believe me when I said it wasn’t me?’”
As an employee of Haus Healing Counseling, Alicia Cale is a mandatory reporter who would be required to report child abuse. Records are not clear on who called 911 about the assault.
NDN Collective, an Indigenous nonprofit, said Randle – who is Cheyenne River Lakota and Black – was racially profiled and targeted in his own neighborhood.
“For a grown man to target and assault a 13-year-old Black Lakota boy walking home from football practice is a hate crime,” Valeriah Big Eagle, NDN Collective director of strategic partnerings and Ihanktonwan Nakota/Hunkpati Dakota, said at an Oct. 17 press conference.
“Reuben deserves justice to the fullest extent of the law, and we pray for his healing journey to be able to move forward after this traumatic event,” Big Eagle said.
Randle’s two friends, who were with him, are Black.
Before the incident, Afraid of Lightning-Craddock said she’d witnessed posts in their community Facebook page accusing her son and other kids of stealing items.
“The vigilante behavior that page spreads puts children at risk,” she said. “Wesley Cale and his wife were on that page spreading vigilante behavior. They took the law into their own hands instead of calling the police or Antelope Ridge Security.”
The day of the attack, Alicia Cale posted on the page that the night before at least two individuals “drinking twisted teas” had attempted to break into her home. This is the incident that she questioned Randle about that evening, Afraid of Lightning-Craddock said.
Randle is still upset over the assault, his mother said.
“He made the comment, ‘If I had just made it to the park there would have been cameras,’” Afraid of Lightning-Craddock said. “I told him, ‘You can’t blame yourself for that, you cannot.’ His friends blame themselves that they couldn’t save him and that hurts. No child should have to put that responsibility on themselves.”
Randle recently testified before a grand jury about his experience, but the family had not received any word yet of grand jury action, his mother said.
“We’re very hopeful that this grand jury will result in the charges against Wesley being elevated from simple to aggravated assault,” Big Eagle said. “They’ll be able to hear Reuben talk. He thought he was going to be killed; he’s just a kid. Imagine all the trauma that’s with him today.”
In a Facebook post, Alicia Cale said she called 911 following the incident.
The Box Elder Police Department did not respond to a request for information on whether Alicia Cale would be charged or if she made the 911 call. Haus Healing Counseling did not respond to questions.
“After she witnessed it, she walked Reuben home chastising him,” Big Eagle said. “Alicia Cale is a mandatory reporter working in behavioral health.”
A police report from the incident does identify that 911 was called regarding an adult male who had “chased, tormented and assaulted” three juveniles.
The Meade County State’s Attorney’s Office, Cale Jr’s attorney Matthew L. Skinner and Haus Healing all did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Wesley Cale Jr.’s arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 13 at the Meade County Courthouse in Sturgis.
This story is co-published by the Rapid City Journal and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the South Dakota area.
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