DeKalb man, found by police with bleeding head, charged with hate crime

A DeKalb man who appeared in front of a judge Wednesday with his head bandaged has been charged with a hate crime following a bloody attack in DeKalb that police said was provoked by the man yelling racial slurs.

Ryan Betsinger, 33, was arrested on Tuesday after DeKalb police found him covered in blood and bleeding from his head, according to a police synopsis of the attack filed in court. He is charged with Class 4 felony hate crime, and aggravated assault, resisting a police officer and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors. If convicted, he faces up to 3 years in prison.

According to DeKalb County court records, a witness told police Betsinger allegedly threatened a woman he did not know with a knife on Tuesday near the 200 block of East Locust Street. A man, who is Black, told police he stepped in to try to defend the woman, and Betsinger threatened him with the same knife and reportedly called him a racial slur, court records allege.

That man responded by chasing Betsinger on foot, picking up a ski pole and an aluminum cane as they ran down the block, before striking Betsinger across his head with the cane, police wrote in court records. Police said that the man would be charged with aggravated battery, too. But a court records search Wednesday did not reveal any criminal charges connected to the man’s name.

DeKalb County public defender William Weeden disputed the police synopsis during a pretrial release hearing on Wednesday. Weeden, speaking to Circuit Court Judge Marcy Buick, said Betsinger told him he was threatened by someone while leaving a job site.

“The only time he ever pulled a knife out, your honor, was to keep the individual away from him,” Weeden said. “As you can see from his appearance, he seems to have gotten the worst end of that assault.”

But in their synopsis, DeKalb police said they were told Betsinger had a head injury from a different day and considered the possibility that the blow to his head caused a previous injury to reopen. Police wrote that Betsinger refused to listen to their commands and walked away before pulling out a pocket knife, which was folded in. Betsinger told officers he had a knife and placed it in his front pocket, records show.

When police told Betsinger he was being arrested for aggravated battery, Betsinger resisted, and a DeKalb officer swept his leg under Betsinger, sending him to the ground, records show. Betsinger appeared virtually before a judge on the charges with a large white medical bandage wrapped around the top of his head.

Though Buick granted Betsinger pretrial release on the charges stemming from his Tuesday arrest – which he responded to with an enthusiastic thumbs up and smile directed away from the camera – he remains in custody since prosecutors allege he violated the terms of a previous drug-related case in DeKalb County.

When he was arrested, Betsinger was in a restore/renew agreement with the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office after he pleaded guilty on March 24, 2025, to unlawful possession of a controlled substance, records show. First assistant state’s attorney Alicia Kaplan asked Buick on Wednesday to revoke Betsinger’s pretrial release related to the 2024 case.

Buick granted the request, and said that Betsinger had admitted to violating the terms of his restore agreement. Buick said Betsinger reported that he used drugs as recently as Monday.

His next hearing is scheduled for 9:45 a.m. on Aug. 28.