An anonymous 2oceansviber sent in this story. According to our source, “A repeat transgressor, bully, simpleton loser has eventually been caught on camera assaulting another surfer in the water. I have seen this guy first hand and it’s disgusting.”

The thumbnail gallery can be seen below.

These photographs came from Wavescape who had this to say:

A recent near-drowning took place at a left pointbreak up the West Coast the day before New Year’s Eve. An anonymous reader sent in these photos showing a surfer gripping another in a neck lock and repeatedly dunking him in the water until he was on the verge of passing out.

‘The guy could easily have died. Luckily another guy intervened, and he let go. It was homicidal. The bald guy in the photo said he would kill his victim’s family, but swiftly departed the beach after the incident,’ said the reader, who said the victim did not want to press charges because he was afraid of reprisals.

[more here]

The guy apparently goes by the name ‘Rasool Hendricks.’

Various comments have streamed in under the original article. According to one, the surfer who nearly drowned in these pictures, was a tourist who has vowed never to return.

if you guys wanna know what happened to that victim, well he went back to Ozz with his family (wife and kids) and said he would never visit this country again. whats even worse is he traveled up to J-bay a week later and the locals did the same thing to him up there … shocked … he was not a bad guy and was doing nothing wrong both times (from Dangerous D)

A large number of the comments were from people with first-hand experience with Hendricks:

StevoSA had this to say:

There is no place for violence in the surf, not of this nature. Opinions about localism are mostly a grey area, but putting someone in headlock and almost choking them out while in the water is, legally speaking, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. It is typically punishable by 3 to 10 years prison sentence.

Regardless of whether the victim presses charges or not, I think it is our duty as a surf community to make it known to him that his behaviour is unacceptable and that he is unwelcome to share the water with us. By this I don’t mean lowering ourselves to his level of personal violence, but there are many ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes.

Furthermore, I’ve also heard from many friends within the surfing community, and have personally seen him being verbally abusive and disrespectful to everyone in the water, regardless of sex or age. I’ve personally seen this in J-Bay and Long Beach.

Surf Rage is clearly a lot like road rage, with the only difference being that you can drown. It’s truly sad to see such aggression displayed in a sport which is so close to nature.

Check out the original story here, which is also sporting 10 pages of comments from angry surfers and non-surfers alike.