Juggalos, how do they work? Well apparently, if you’ve got a hatchet man tattoo that they feel isn’t warranted, they’ll try to burn if off of you. At least that’s what happened in Hebron, MD, where Paul Martin Hurst and Cary Lee Edwards, both in their 30s and old enough to know better, put their roommate Zachary Swanson in critical condition. So how did Swanson go from ICP to ICU? According to Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis, both the victim and the assailants are “followers of the Insane Clown Posse, without question.” Apparently, the whole thing started because the two were unhappy with the way Swanson treated his girlfriend, who’s Edwards’ sister. The two brutally beat him with a the handle of a garden tool and a shovel, causing him to suffer fractures to his nasal area and face, brain bleeding, swelling around his eyes, 11 broken ribs and a live laceration. but it gets worse.

Swanson’s arm was forced to be amputated below the elbow, and here’s the reason why:

Edwards lit Swanson’s arm on fire, charging documents state. Each of the suspects, according to charging documents, stated that the other suspect had gotten lighter fluid from inside. This burning was in an attempt to remove a tattoo that Edwards did not believe that Swanson earned,” charging documents state, in relation to Hurst’s account of the incident. Edwards told Detective Tom Funk that before the burning, he and Hurst had tried to cut the tattoo from Swanson’s arm with knives, charging documents state. Lewis said the suspects felt Swanson disrespected the Insane Clown Posse. To them, he had to pay the consequences,” Lewis said.

Yep. Maybe when the FBI classified Juggalos as gang members, they had a point. And while the actions of a few idiots don’t represent the community as a whole, this is some pretty evil shit that went down and sounds more like gang activity than a dispute among friends. The Insane Clown Posse haven’t commented on this yet.

[Delmarvanow, via The Gauntlet]