Mark Phillips, 36, was charged on Dec. 8 with aggravated assault and three counts of assault with a weapon after allegations that a man brandishing a neon baseball bat leapt from his BMW and attacked an immigrant family from Colombia.
The family said the man charged at them unprovoked before they recorded the confrontation on a cell phone, which has been widely circulated through news outlets and social media.
The video shows a man yelling about terrorists and ISIS before he confronts the family in a strip mall parking lot and begins swinging his bat, leaving Sergio Estepa with a cracked rib and severe bruising on his back.
Marl Philips, the accused is a Toronto injury lawyer and the great grandson of Nathan Phillips, Toronto’s first Jewish mayor.
Phillips, dubbed “the mayor of all the people,” is the namesake of the current day Nathan Phillips Square located outside Toronto city hall. A portrait of Nathan Phillips still hangs in the accused’s parents home in Toronto, a childhood friend told a news channel.
Now that one of his great grandsons faces four charges that police have called “disturbing” and possibly “racially motivated,” his family is shocked and saddened, said uncle Jeff Phillips, a London, Ont. lawyer.
Phillips landed his first job as a personal injury lawyer at Toronto’s Mazin Rooz Mazin and stayed for about a year, before working at three other firms, never staying longer than three years at a time.
One of his childhood friend said, “Mark is pretty multi-cultural in the friends that he made.I’ve never known him to be a racial extremist or whatever you want to call it.”
“That video was a different guy from the Mark I knew.”
Phillips has been remanded in custody at the Elgin Middlesex London Detention Centre until his next appearance in court at the end of the week.
