The different it makes is the thread title of this thread, and the very first sentence in this entire thread took pure allegation as stone-cold fact.
An eyewitness or video? No, not necessarily, but he certainly needs something other than his sayso to corroborate it.
Correct, those are the facts, that those are the only facts. Everything else is allegation.
"Attacked" has not been proven, and yes, it actually does matter what one of the alleged punks might have said. What if, instead of what the victim claims to have been said, one of the punks actually said, "If you don't stop hitting Jamal I'm going to shoot you three times and then Travon is gonna stab you!"?
Facts. Don't jump to conclusions with filled in facts.