riverfronttimes.com | Music | Race Rock | 2005-01-12

Local bands get together to help victims of racially motivated violence There is some strange connection between racial violence and head butts. The classic skinhead book, Among the Thugs, is full of them. Not that all skinheads are racist, of course, but the shorn-skulled and their racist ilk seem to have the thick crania needed to deliver the blow. At least, that seems to be the case for the killer of St. Louis native Nick Holmes. Holmes was attending the University of Kentucky when, on January 18, 2002, he and his biracial roommate got into an altercation with Aaron Roth. Roth, according to the Lexington Herald, used a racial slur against Holmes' roommate before the argument became violent, ending with Holmes' skull fractured and him dead. Roth's head butt wasn't fatal: It was Holmes' fall onto the concrete that killed him, which may be why Roth did a total of 60 days in prison for the crime (which was reduced to fourth-degree assault).