Updated: Tue Jul. 07 2009 10:40:48

ctvbc.ca

Mounties on Vancouver Island are investigating what appears to be a racially motivated attack.

The street fight, which happened Friday in Courtenay, B.C., was captured on video and posted on the video sharing website YouTube.

The video shows a fight between a black man and three white men in a parking lot in which racial epithets are clearly heard several times.

The group of men is seen circling the alleged victim in a parking lot and punching him. The man fights back, but is at one point thrown to the ground and hit and kicked by all the men simultaneously.

The N-word can be heard yelled several times.

The alleged victim, Jay Phillips, said the men were egging each other on to see who would throw the first punch.

"They just jump out and surround me... start yelling all kinds of vile shit, N----- this, N----- that, at me," he said.

"They came at me saying they were going to kill me and I was like 'it's go time.'"

The Mounties are falling short of calling it a hate crime, but do say it has racial overtones.

"It is concerning for the police that this may have been a racially motivated crime and we're certainly taking that into consideration at this time in our investigation," Const. Trevor Busch of the Comox Valley RCMP said.

One man has been arrested in connection to the incident. Police say the investigation is still in its preliminary stages and more arrests are expected.

Phillips says it's important for the community to know about what happened to him.

"There are a lot of 14- and 15-year-old black kids in the Valley, young boys just trying to find themselves," he said.

"They don't need to go through this. So I'm doing this for all of them and everybody that can't defend themselves."

The RCMP is now in the process of trying to determine what provoked the attack. They are asking anyone who may have seen something to contact Comox Valley RCMP immediately.