Slain Ecuadoran’s Supporters Denounce One Brooklyn Verdict; Await Another
Hakim Scott listens to closing arguments in his trial for the murder of José Sucuzhañay (Ward photo for the Daily News)
Brooklyn, NY – Hakim Scott, 26, killer of Ecuadoran Immigrant José Sucuzhañay, escaped conviction for murder, but was convicted of manslaughter by a jury in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday. No hate charge was sustained against Scott for the brutal slaying of the 31-year-old Sucuzhañay, who along with his brother Romel was mistaken as a gay man. The brothers were walking arm-in-arm against the cold early on December 7, 2008 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn when Hakim and Keith Phoenix, hurling anti-gay and anti-hispanic epithets, attacked them with a beer bottle, their heavily shod feet, and an aluminum baseball bat. Family and friends of the victim swiftly denounced the verdict as soft and wrong-headed, according to several news sources. The New York Daily News reports that José’s brother Diego, vigorously maligned the verdict, saying, “There was testimony that these words of hate were used. We believe right now would have been a perfect time to send a message against hate, intolerism [sic] and racism.” On Friday, the Columbus, IN Republic interviewed Christine Quinn, speaker of the New York City Council, as she stood with Sucuzhañay’s three brothers outside the courthouse, “Look, two brothers were walking home. They weren’t bothering anybody. All of a sudden two guys jump out of a car and beat José and leave him for dead, calling him anti-gay and anti-immigrant names? That’s a hate crime,” she said. The Latin American Herald Tribune reported that Quinn further defined what kind of hate crime Sucuzhañay suffered: “Jose Sucuzhañay was murdered because Hakim Scott and Keith Phoenix did not like who he is and who they thought he was,” Quinn said. “And they attacked him, by all accounts, for no other reason than their hatred of the LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) community and their hatred of Latinos and immigrants. That’s what killed Jose Sucuzhañay.” Quinn, Brooklyn Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, and a number of other elected officials believe that the manslaughter verdict, which may entail a 25-year prison term for Scott, to be too lenient for such a savage killing. Diego, speaking for the Sucuzhañays on the courthouse steps during a Friday press conference, said, “The judicial system has failed to send a clear message. Our family still can’t understand how the jury has come to the conclusion that the attack on my brothers and the murder of José was not motivated by hate,” according to the LAHT. The trial of Keith Phoenix, who allegedly swung the bat so hard that it burst his victim’s skull, is still proceeding. The 30-year-old African American is being tried before a second jury seated in the same courtroom as the jury that convicted Scott of manslaughter. Phoenix is charged with murder and murder as a hate crime in the case. Members of the Scott jury who were willing to speak to the press speculated that Phoenix may likely be convicted of a hate crime for his part in the grisly bludgeoning of the Ecuadoran businessman. A verdict in his trial is expected sometime next week. As supporters await the Phoenix verdict, Walter Sinche, Director of the international Ecuadoran Alliance told a reporter for the Daily News, “Someday maybe we’ll get justice. Hopefully, these types of attacks will stop.”
Anti-Gay, Anti-Latino Murder Trial in Brooklyn; Assailants “Didn’t Like the Way They Looked”
José Sucuzhañay
Brooklyn, New York – After a year and a half, a murdered Ecuadoran immigrant mistaken as gay may get some justice. José Sucuzhañay, 31, a native of Ecuador with a real estate brokerage in New York, was savagely dispatched with a beer bottle, kicks and stomps, and an aluminum baseball bat, according to testimony reported by media throughout the Five Boroughs of New York. The trials of Hakim Scott, 26, and Keith Phoenix, 30, got underway in Brooklyn Supreme Court on April 10 for the 2008 murder of Sucuzhañay. Charges against the pair include second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and murder as a hate crime. If convicted, the alleged killers could face sentences of 78-years-to-life imprisonment. The defendants are being tried simultaneously before separate juries in a precisely choreographed judicial drama. At times, both juries are seated to hear the same testimony. At other times, dictated by the presentation of evidence, only one jury is present in the courtroom. As reported by the New York Times, José Sucuzhañay and his brother, Romel, visiting from Ecuador, were attacked at 3 a.m. on December 7, 2008 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn because Scott and Phoenix “didn’t like the way they looked.” Prosecutor Josh Hanshaft, referring to Phoenix who allegedly wielded the bat, told the juries, “He didn’t like that they were Hispanic. From his eyes, it appeared they were a gay couple, a way of life he didn’t like and wasn’t going to tolerate.” In reality, both men were heterosexual. The Latino brothers had been drinking at parties in the neighborhood and were tipsy enough that they uninhibitedly hugged each other for support and warmth on a bitterly old night as they walked along. The attackers, who had also been partying that night, set upon them, yelling “faggot ass niggers” and “fucking Spanish,” from Phoenix’s red SUV. The prosecution believe that both assailants acted in concert to effect their victim’s death. Scott, Hanshaft said, emerged from the auto and smashed a beer bottle over José’s head. He then charged Romel with the deadly shards of broken glass, slashing at his neck. Phoenix took the bat, swinging it “high above his head,” and struck Sucuzhañay “over and over and over again,” Hanshaft said. “He came back with the bat and hit him two to three times on the head, cracking his skull wide open.” A Brooklyn cabbie at the scene witnessed the attack well enough to capture the license plate of the red SUV, but then had to cover his eyes with his hands, unable to watch the coup de grâce delivered by Phoenix. As reported by Chelsea Now, taxi driver Davi Almonte, speaking through an interpreter, told the court, “I didn’t want to see the head explode when it was hit. I could hear the impact [of the bat crushing his skull].” According to NY1, in testimony on the trial’s second day, Demetrius Nathaniels, cousin of Keith Phoenix, heard the bones cracking as Phoenix bludgeoned Sucuzhañay with the bat on his head, back, side and ribs. A coroner’s report confirmed that José died of a fractured skull from blunt force trauma. Romel, only superficially injured by Scott’s assault, was left stunned, nearly catatonic by the body of his brother who lay in a massive pool of blood, and had to be led away by police responding to the alarm raised by witnesses. The alleged killers sped from the scene. A toll booth video capture of the red SUV on the Triborough Bridge clearly shows Phoenix laughing and smiling barely 19 minutes after the fatal attack. Sucuzhañay was left brain dead, and placed on a ventilator at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens where he finally succumbed on December 12. An outpouring of grief and rage followed news of the murder, both in New York and in Sucuzhañay’s native Ecuador where the slain immigrant was given a near-state funeral attended by hundreds. New York Gay and Latino advocacy groups organized protests and vigils, while city officials roundly condemned the brutal killing. Philip J. Smallman, attorney for Phoenix, summed up the consensus of all concerned with events of December 7: “Does anything good happen at 3 o’clock on a Sunday morning in 30-degree weather, with people with bellies full of booze?” he asked. The Brooklyn trial is expected to last for a number of weeks.
Big Sentence For Galveston Hate Crime Attacker
Galveston, TX – Alejandro Sam Gray,18, (pictured at left), wasn’t expecting a 20 year sentence for chunking a 4 lb. hunk of concrete into a gay man’s head at a gay bar, but the judge had other ideas this past Friday. According to the Galveston County Daily News, 212th District Court Judge Susan Criss, said: “It has been suggested that the actions by (Gray) were done because of his youth, because of his immaturity and because he was following the wrong crowd, and I am not buying any of that. He made a decision to commit a crime of violence and a crime of hate.” Gray pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon, and to a hate crime enhancement charge, since he and accomplices chose a gay bar for their violence-spree on Sunday, May 1, 2009. Along with two brothers, Lawrence Henry Lewis III (20), Lawrneil Henry Lewis (18), Gray, 17 at the time of the attack, swung the door of Robert’s Lafitte Lounge, a landmark gay bar on Galveston Island for years, heaving rocks and jagged pieces of concrete block being used as door stops at patrons. One struck Marc Bosaw in the back of the head, leaving a gash in his scalp that required twelve staples to close. James Nickelsen was also wounded and treated at the scene. The three youths ran away after the assault, but police apprehended them within 10 blocks of the bar. All three were arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and placed under $120,000 bond. The hate crime enhancement came later when it was determined that they had deliberately intended to terrorize gay men. Texas passed a state hate crimes law including a provision to protect gays and lesbians back in 2001, but the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act has been invoked so infrequently in the Lone Star State that it has been all but ineffective. As Equality Texas noted in 2009, though more than 1,800 hate crimes occurred in Texas during a nine-year period from 2001 to 2009, only 9 cases in the state were prosecuted under the provisions of the law. Hunter Jackson, a University of Texas journalism intern and hate crime survivor opined, “With the recent passage of the Federal Hate Crimes Bill, more pressure will likely be on Texas prosecutors to obtain hate crime rulings, since the bill gives the federal government power to intervene when states are not upholding the provisions of their own hate crime statutes.” That was the case in Galveston this past week. Judge Criss handed down a stiff penalty for anti-gay hate. Gray’s accomplice, Lawrence Henry Lewis III, had struck a plea deal back in January and was sentenced to 5 years in prison. The Galveston County District Attorney had asked the same for Gray, and most expected the same sentence. Gray’s lawyer argued for deferred adjudication for his client. Some are calling the sentence excessive. Philip Lipnick, a youth counselor and director of Galveston Youth Creating Their Own Future, had testified on Gray’s behalf at the trial, and told the Daily News, “More harm than good will be done by this. (Gray) has never had a criminal record before this. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know what kind of message the judge is trying to send.” Sounds to us at the Unfinished Lives Project that the judge’s message to Gray and to Texas couldn’t be clearer. The other Lewis brother is to be tried in April.
Trans Community Demands Justice for Myra Ical
Houston, TX – Cristan Williams, Executive Director of the Transgender Foundation of America, takes the murder of Myra Ical personally. “She died struggling for her life…She went down fighting and she was literally beaten to death,” she said to reporters for KHOU 11 News. “It’s personal. I feel it on a personal level.” Hundreds agree with Williams. Myra Chanel Ical, 51, died in a Montrose area field a week ago, and Houston’s transgender community has rallied to her memory. Seven members of the transgender community have died violently in Houston in the last eleven years, and now the vigil organized to remember Ms. Ical on Monday night is being billed as the largest transgender event in Houston’s history. The vigil’s organizers intend to focus attention on the plight of transgender people in Harris County and Houston as they honor Ms. Ical’s memory and call for neighbors in Montrose to share any leads they may have on the unsolved murder with police investigators. While her slaying is not yet designated as a hate crime, police are certainly not ruling anything out. Sgt. Bobby Roberts, spokesperson for the Houston Police Department, told reporters, “It could have been anything at this point. We just don’t have any motive whatsoever on this case.” ABC News 13 reports that Ms. Ical’s body was covered in bruises and bore several defensive-type wounds that showed she was fighting back against her attacker(s). Harris County’s Medical Examiner ruled that she died from strangulation by some sort of ligature. Cristan Williams cannot get the horror of how Ms. Ical died out of her mind. “That in and of itself was just a horrific way to die. Her last moments of life were sheer terror.” Williams asks why none of the seven murders of Houston transgender people have been solved. Police told her they have no evidence in any of the cases, something Williams attributes to the way anti-transgender crimes went largely unreported in the recent past. Until the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act this past October, local and federal law enforcement agencies were not mandated to keep statistics on transgender hate crimes. Like the transgender population, these crimes were largely ignored. Human rights advocates for the LGBT community are watching closely to see if the election of Annise Parker, an open and out lesbian, as Mayor of Houston will make a difference in how law enforcement and the media approach violence against some of the most vulnerable citizens of America’s 4th largest city.
Major Media Fail Over Murder of Houston Transwoman
Houston, TX – Myra Ical lived and died as a transwoman, but the Houston media have not given her the dignity of acknowledging her gender identity when reporting on her likely hate murder. The Houston Chronicle reported Ical’s January 18 murder in the Montrose section using exclusively male pronouns, calling her male, and playing up the sensational aspects of the area where homeless people eek out a living. As is often sadly the case in reportage that is lazy and salacious, the Chronicle used innuendo to suggest that Ical, whose body was found partially naked and covered with bruises and defensive injuries indicative of her fight with her attacker(s), was consorting with prostitutes and drug addicts. Local and national LGBT rights organizations have pushed back against this media injustice by calling attention to Ms. Ical’s gender identity and expression, and demanding that reportage get this aspect of such a terrible story right. According to The Advocate, Human Rights Campaign board member and Pride Houston president Meghan Stabler submitted a strongly worded letter on behalf of both organizations to media outlets covering Ms. Ical’s murder, urging reporters to “use fair, accurate and inclusive reporting” when reporting on LGBT issues. The letter read, in part: “On Monday January 18 the brutal murder of Myra Ical occurred in Houston. She is a transgender woman but the media continue to use male pronouns along with colorful statements about being found in an area known for drugs and prostitution. This lazy and irresponsible journalism shows the amount of ignorance about transgender issues that is rampant among far too many reporters despite the existence of resources to help them report accurately.” GLAAD and the AP have clear guidelines on how LGBT-oriented stories should be reported, leaving big media like the Houston Chronicle without excuse. Myra Ical, who was 51 when she died, will be remembered at a candlelight vigil near the site of her murder at the corner of Richmond Avenue and Garrott Street on Monday, January 25, from 6-6:30 pm. The Facebook notice for the vigil calls upon media and the Houston Police Department “to communicate with the public in a way that respects the victim.” Thanks to Daniel Williams for breaking this story in the DFW metroplex.
Queens Gay Bashers Indicted for Hate Crimes
Defendant Daniel Rodriguez
Queens, NY – Both men charged with the savage assault that left gay New Yorker Jack Price near death in mid-October have been indicted for 14 counts of assault and robbery as a hate crime, as well as possession of stolen property. Daniel Rodriguez, 21, and Daniel Aleman, 26, both from College Point, Queens, allegedly attacked Jack Price, 49, early in the morning on October 8. The assault, sudden and brutal, lasted for roughly three minutes. A surveillance camera caught the bashing on tape, a damning piece of evidence the defense will have a hard time explaining away. According to Gay City News, if convicted, each defendant could receive up to 25 years in prison, with the stipulation that neither of them could be released before 21 years of the sentence had been served. Police investigators said that the bashing took place 4:30 a.m. on October 8 as Price was leaving a local 24-hour delicatessen. Rodriguez and Aleman allegedly accosted Price in the deli as he was buying a pack of cigarettes, and then followed him outside to press their attack. During the beating, Rodriguez allegedly yelled at Price repeatedly, calling him a “faggot.” After rifling through his pockets, the pair shown on camera left the scene. Price, before falling into a coma, was able to identify his assailants to police. Unbeknownst to Rodriguez and Aleman, who allegedly taunted him in Spanish, Price understood the language, and gave details of what he heard to the investigators. Price lay in the New York Medical Center of Queens for better than three weeks, suffering from a broken jaw, a lacerated spleen, broken ribs, and two collapsed lungs. Protests against hate violence were organized swiftly, the largest of them comprised of over 500 who demanded justice for Price. A small contingent of supporters of the defendants staged a counter-protest. Aleman was arrested in short order in Queens. Rodriguez fled to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was arrested on October 13. After his transport back to Queens for arraignment, Rodriguez confessed to NYPD officers that he assaulted Price, and gave the following details of the run-up to the attack, according to WABC News: “According to prosecutors, Rodriguez admitted he and the other suspect Daniel Aleman confronted Price believing he was about to write his phone number on a wall in order to solicit other men. It was that confrontation that led to the beating. Prosecutors also say Rodriguez admitted to yelling anti-gay epithets while beating Price. Rodriguez’s attorney says that his client never confessed and that the NYPD detectives basically put words in his client’s mouth.” Price counters that he never wrote graffiti on the deli wall, and did nothing to provoke the attack. Rodriguez’s animus toward Price was clear to investigators who report that Rodriguez admitted to using the anti-gay slurs because “Jack is disgusting.” Both defendants are being held at Riker’s Island without bail. Price has substantially recovered from the physical aspects of the beating, but the psychological injuries he sustained will take a lifetime to cope with. When he woke up from his coma in the hospital, he told relatives that he was “surprised to be alive.”
Gay Man’s Murderer Denied Parole Again
Huntsville, TX – Jon Christopher Buice, serving a 45-year sentence for the murder of gay banker Paul Broussard, was denied parole for the fifth time in a mid-December decision to keep the confessed killer behind bars. Buice, now 33, is the last of the so-called “Woodlands 10” still incarcerated for the notorious anti-gay killing which took place on July 4, 1991 in the Montrose section of Houston. Broussard, 27, a gentle, fun-loving gay man who specialized in setting up retirement accounts for clients of Bank of America, was attacked by the gang outside Heaven, a popular gay nightclub. In a letter sent to Gabi Clayton, founder of FUAH, Families United Against Hate, Broussard’s mother, Nancy Rodriguez, recalled the details of the fatal assault on her son: “[Paul] and two of his friends were walking to their car in Montrose when they were attacked by ten men. These ten men, members of the gang that came to be known in and around Harris County as ‘the gay bashers’ drove from the Woodlands into Houston for the sole purpose of harassing gays. Paul was thrown to the ground, kicked, hit in the face, ribs, chest and groin. The four men who did this wore steel toed boots and had boards with nails driven into them. While Paul was lying on the ground moaning and in a great deal of pain, Jon Buice stabbed him in the chest with his buck knife, going left to right. He also stabbed Paul in the abdomen, going front to back and toe to head. The depth of penetration was five and one half inches to the inferior vena cava and small intestine. This information is from the autopsy report. There is no doubt in my mind that Buice meant to kill Paul.” The other assailants were given lighter sentences, and have all subsequently been released from prison. Supporters of Buice argue that he has maintained a spotless prison record, earning two college degrees during his incarceration. They also believe that Buice has demonstrated good faith toward the Houston LGBT community, asking their forgiveness for his role in Broussard’s brutal murder. Nancy Rodriguez isn’t buying stories of Buice’s rehabilitation. She says she is committed to making her son’s killer serve 27 years of his sentence–one year for every year of Paul’s life. She told the Houston Press that the only remorse she sees in Buice after all these years is the Johnny-come-lately kind, in contrast to the response of other members of the gang. “Others seemed sorry, and said so right away, and it did mean something,” she said. Rodriguez is campaigning for a full five-year set aside before Buice can be considered for parole again, in order to break the cycle of annual hearings he has been granted for the past few years. “All I can say is, I’ll be back next year,” Rodriguez said when contacted by the Conroe Courier about the board’s recent denial of Buice’s request for release.
Gay Man Murdered in Buffalo; Hate Crime Suspected
Buffalo, NY – Christopher Rudow, a 32-year-old gay man, was found murdered in his Buffalo loft apartment on Tuesday, January 5. His friends suspect a hate crime motive in the killing. Rudow was a well-liked employee of GEICO who moved from New York City to Buffalo six years ago. He was known throughout the LGBT community largely because of his expertise as a DJ, his avocation on the side. Friends describe Rudow as a real professional who had the equipment and the know-how to be a great tune-spinner. He owned expensive audio components that he kept in three trunks inside his Elk Terminal apartment, but none of it was disturbed by whoever killed him. WIVB Television reports the coronor determined Rudow’s cause of death to be blunt force trauma. No suspects have surfaced in the investigation thus far. Rudow’s murder took place hot on the heels of two other possible anti-LGBT hate crimes in the Buffalo metro area. In nearby Cheektowaga, two women were charged with assaulting a 20-year-old gay man on December 31 at the Walden Galleria while yelling homophobic slurs. On New Year’s Day, Lindsay Harmon, a 29-year-old lesbian was stabbed in the face and eye by a young woman shouting similar slurs at her. LGBT activists in Buffalo say that many more hate crime attacks have occurred in recent months but go unreported, either because of fear of exposure, or out of a sense of despair that law enforcement will ever prosecute the crimes under New York’s hate crime law. As Kitty Lambert, President of Outspoken for Equality, a Buffalo LGBT rights organization said to The Buffalo News, “I personally know of 10 unreported hate crime assaults in the city in the past two months. Why? Because people are frightened to report it. Why should they bother reporting it?,” she added. “It won’t be prosecuted as a hate crime.” The LGBT community is alarmed and on their guard, expecting more attacks. In the meanwhile, the investigation into Christopher Rudow’s murder goes on. His case has yet to be designated as a hate crime, but human rights advocates throughout Western New York are demanding answers as to why authorities seem so reluctant to employ the hate crimes laws in the battle against violent homophobia.
“Jane Doe” Lesbian Rape Hearing Set A Year After the Crime
Josue Gonzalez, suspect in "Jane Doe" Rape Case
Contra Costa County, California – According to The Bay Area Reporter, an out lesbian known only to the public as “Jane Doe” was brutally raped by four men who attacked her because of her sexual orientation. The first preliminary hearing on the case is scheduled to be held in January 2010, over a year after the savage rape incident that nearly took her life. On December 13, 2008 at about 9:30 p.m., “Jane,” 28 at the time of the attack according to an AP wire service report, was sexually assaulted by the men who watched her get out of her car in Richmond’s Belding-Woods neighborhood. They had noticed a rainbow pride sticker on the car window, which police allege aided them in targeting the lesbian. They forced her back into her car after being disturbed by someone approaching the scene of the crime, and drove her seven blocks to another location near an apartment complex on Burbeck Avenue where she was repeatedly sexually assaulted and beaten with a blunt object. During the assault, the rapists allegedly taunted her for being a lesbian. They stole her wallet, dumped her naked on the street, and drove away in her car, which was later identified by a rainbow sticker on the windshield. Wounded and bleeding, “Jane” crawled to one of the apartments, and found help from the residents, who called the Richmond police. She was transported to the hospital where her injuries were treated, and evidence of the rapes was collected with a rape kit. “Jane’s” car was located in Richmond the next day. Four suspects were arrested two weeks later, Humberto Hernandez Salvador, 32; Josue Gonzalez, 22; Darrell Albert Hodges, 16; and Robert James Ortiz, 16. Salvador, Gonzalez, and Hodges pleaded not guilty earlier this year to felony kidnapping, carjacking, forcible rape, and forcible oral copulation. Ortiz will enter a plea on similar charges January 7, according to documents of the court. Bail for Ortiz is $3.5 million, bail for Salvador is $2.2 million, and bail for Gonzalez and Hodges is $1.9 million. The Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney, Danielle Douglas told BAR reporters that the victim, who is partnered and has an eight year old child, is “coping” the best she can. “That’s really all I can say,” Douglas said. “She’s doing her best to try to move forward.” Richmond Police spokesman Lieutenant Mark Gagan commented to the BAR on the brutality of the crime: “What’s difficult in this case is the level of aggression that the suspects showed was so immediate and over the top I don’t think that there was anything that our victim could have done to avoid being victimized,” said Gagan. “From what I understand, it was an immediate, extremely aggressive attack without provocation and without really any warning.” District Attorney Office spokespeople say that the complexity of this case makes it move so slowly through the court system. Since serious jail time is involved for all the suspects if proven guilty, each one of them has secured separate counsel, and all the defense attorneys are asking for maximum time to prepare for the trials, which will probably be split among the defendants rather being done as a single trial for all four men. “Jane Doe’s” legal counsel, Gloria Allred, who represented the mother of slain transgender woman Gwen Araujo, is not pressing the court dates, given the level of trauma her client sustained from the multiple rapes and the viciousness of the attack. A preliminary hearing is set for early January 2010, a usual legal procedure in California law in rape cases. If the preliminary hearing uncovers evidence enough for a trial in the case, then the wheels of justice will turn toward days in court for the four defendants and the victim of one of Richmond’s most brutal anti-LGBT hate crimes.
Houston Cy-Fair Bus Driver Fired Over Gay Teen Beating
Houston, TX – The Cy-Fair Independent School District has fired a bus driver for offering a 16-year-old openly gay student no assistance when he told the driver a gang was on the bus waiting to beat him up. After an investigation by school district officials, the as yet unnamed driver was released from employment for ignoring the pleas of Jayron Martin, a sophomore at Langham Creek High, who had been tipped off by a friend that a gang of boys were “going to beat the gayness out of him.” KPRC Local 2 News reports that Langham Creek High School officials have acknowledged that the day of the beating, Martin asked school leaders and his bus driver for help and protection. An assistant principal at the school is still under investigation, according to a school district spokeswoman. “The review is not completed. Thus far, [the assistant principal’s] actions have not merited putting him on administrative leave. Included in the review of what happened that day are details that cannot be shared publicly because of federal law,” said Kelli Durham, on behalf of Cy-Fair ISD. Young Martin has always contended that the school’s principals were more at fault than the bus driver, since they had a considerable amount of time to respond to his appeal for help while the bus driver had to make his decision on the spot. “Because I told [the principals] first and I gave a written statement and they did nothing at all,” he said. Martin’s nine tormentors who were also riding the same bus chased him down when Martin was let off at his neighborhood. One of boys, himself 16 years of age, beat Martin with a metal pipe while the other eight cheered him on and spat expletives and slurs at their victim. The harrowing ordeal only ended when a neighbor broke up the beating with a loaded and cocked shotgun. The assailant and his accomplices ran away, leaving Martin cut, beaten, bruised, and concussed. The 16-year-old attacker, whose name remains confidential since he is still a juvenile, has been charged with aggravated assault. Martin’s mother contends that he should be charged with a hate crime. LaKenya Martin said that though the experience was one of the most trying of his son’s life, and very well could have ended with much more than injuries, she suspects that the publicity the school district has faced from Texas and around the nation will generate change. “It might take some time, but with all changes, that’s what happens, it takes time and I do think that everything is going to come to light and people will see this can’t continue,” she told reporters.
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
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Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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