A white couple faces a jury in the 2018 attack of a Black man at a Monterey bowling alley.

There came a moment in the trial of a white couple accused of assault and hate crimes in an attack on a Black man outside of a Monterey bowling alley when the victim was asked why he didn’t just walk away from their racist taunts.

Dirrick Williams paused as if to consider his words, and in a voice choked with emotion, answered why: “My name isn’t nigger.

“I don’t have to walk away. My grandfather had to walk away, my father had to walk away. My brothers had to walk away,” he said. “My mother named me Dirrick Williams, not nigger.”

Williams’ testimony came on Dec. 3, the opening day of the Monterey County Superior Court trial of Noah and Tricia Boewer, accused of the racially motivated beating outside the bowling alley on July 6, 2018.

Early that evening, Williams went to the Monterey Lanes on Fremont Boulevard to collect entry fees and paperwork for a charity golf and bowling tournament he ran each year for The Village Project, the Seaside-based youth services nonprofit where he’s a long-time board member. The Boewers, who had been at the bar and had already engaged in a verbal attack on a pair of men – the bartender testified that Noah Boewer referred to them as “fucking Indians” and told them “if you keep looking over here I will knock your fucking teeth out " – had stepped outside to smoke when Williams walked out.

Williams says he said “excuse me” as he stepped around Tricia Boewer to go to his car. The Boewers claim Williams deliberately touched Tricia’s butt as he walked past. While Tricia Boewer claims she yelled at Williams, “keep walking, motherfucker,” Williams says Tricia Boewer told him, “Don’t look at me, nigger, what are you looking at motherfucker,” and that both hurled multiple racist epithets at him, prompting him to turn and ask why.

“I was trying to figure it out, why anyone would say that, where is it coming from, what am I supposed to do with this,” Williams testified. “My goal was to find out why someone would speak that way.”

Instead of a conversation, though, what happened next was an assault. While no witnesses saw how the fight began, Williams says Noah Boewer took up a fighting stance and began swinging on him; when he fought back, he says, Tricia Boewer then jumped on his back.

Joseph Alhadi, who was playing pool at the bowling alley, said he heard the commotion and went outside to see Williams on top of Noah Boewer, trying to prevent Boewer from punching him. He also testified that both Boewers repeatedly used the N-word. Williams suffered multiple jaw fractures.

On Dec. 8, after about six hours of deliberations, the jury came back with perplexingly mixed results: They found Noah Boewer guilty of assault, but not of the hate crime, and they found Tricia Boewer guilty of misdemeanor battery.

“It’s upside down,” Williams said of the verdict. “They tried to adjudicate the physical contact between two men as the crime when the crime is what (Tricia) initiated and what she tried to do.”

Sentencing is set for Jan. 6. Noah Boewer will remain in custody and also faces trial in San Benito County, where he’s accused of beating his wife.