Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

15-Year-Old McInerney Will Be Tried as an Adult for the Murder of Larry King

Brandon McInerney, left, and Larry King, right

Brandon McInerney, left, and Larry King, right

Ventura County, CA – A judge reviewing the evidence against Brandon McInerney, 15, has ruled today that he will be tried “under special circumstances”  as an adult in the February 2008 shooting death of his 15-year-old gay classmate, Larry King, at a middle school in Oxnard, CA.  McInerney’s attorney has consistently argued that his client, 14 at the time of the shooting, should be tried as a juvenile rather than an adult.  But Judge Ken Riley ruled otherwise, on the basis of testimony in the three-day preliminary hearing that McInerney had threatened King’s life, and that on the morning of the shooting, he chose not to confront King on the playground or in the corridor before school, but “lay in wait” for 15 or 20 minutes inside the 8:30 am computer class he shared with his alleged victim before pulling the trigger, killing him in cold blood in front of their classmates.  The “executory nature” of the murder convinced Judge Riley to remand McInerney for trial as an adult, according to the Ventura County Star.  If convicted of all counts against him, McInerney could serve 53 years to life in prison.  The defendant’s mother, Kendra McInerney, broke out in tears as the judge issued his ruling.  The defense is expected to continue raising the “gay panic defense” as a mitigating factor in the slaying.  McInerney’s lawyer has said that his client cracked when King, who was openly gay and presented femininely, sent him a Valentine and blew him kisses.  Other evidence presented in the preliminary hearing suggests that McInerney was steeped in Neo-Nazi propaganda and had recently stayed over at the home of a white supremacist leader before the shooting, factors that may have influenced him to attack his gay classmate.

July 22, 2009 Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Blame the victim, Bullying in schools, California, gay men, gay panic defense, gun violence, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacy, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, School and church shootings | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 15-Year-Old McInerney Will Be Tried as an Adult for the Murder of Larry King

Satendar Singh Remembered: Would Have Been 29 Today

Satendar Singh (July 21, 1980-July 5, 2007)

Satendar Singh (July 21, 1980-July 5, 2007)

Satendar Singh, gay Indo-Fijian immigrant to the United States, would have been 29 years old today.  He was fatally injured at California’s Lake Natoma State Park by Slavic fundamentalist Christians who shouted slurs at him on July 1, 2007, calling him “Hindu,” “7-11 Worker,” “Faggot,” and taunting him that he should “go to a good church” like they did.  Punched in the face by Andrey Vusik, a Russian car exporter who had just come from church that Sunday morning, Singh fell backward, striking his head on a concrete walk.  Though he regained consciousness for a short time, Singh went into a coma, losing all brain activity.  Since his parents lived 5,000 miles away in the South Pacific nation of Fiji, the decision to remove life support from him fell to his uncle and aunt, who like Singh, lived in Sacramento.  Vusik fled the United States, leaving his wife and three small children behind in West Sacramento, and is still at large.  An accomplice of his, Alexandr Shevchenko, stood trial in May 2008 for inciting a fight, assault, and a hate crime.  He was found guilty of the two misdemeanor charges, but the the jury deadlocked 7-5 on the hate crime charge.  Shevchenko was sentenced to 150 days in jail.  Singh’s fatal offense seems to have been dancing with both men and women friends who went to the lake with him to celebrate his promotion at work.  Friction between Slavic fundamentalist Christians who teach that homosexuality is a sin and the large LGBT population of Sacramento had been growing for over two years, with thousands of “Russian Baptists” and Pentecostals from Russia, Uzbekistan, the Ukraine, and Belorussia who emigrated to the US for religious freedom protesting any public LGBT celebration or event in the Sacramento Valley.  LGBT rights advocates feared that something deadly might happen one day, and they point to Satendar Singh’s murder as evidence that they were right.  The two men who attacked Singh and his party of friends had ties to the anti-gay extremist group, Watchmen On the Walls, featured in the Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Singh, a Sikh and not a Hindu as his attackers falsely assumed, was transported back to Fiji for the last rites of his funeral.  Rest in peace, sweet brother!

July 21, 2009 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, California, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Remembrances | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Satendar Singh Remembered: Would Have Been 29 Today

“Shoot Nudists Before They Bugger You”: Video Game That Targets LGBT People

HUNTERX390Advocate.com posts an article today on a video game arousing a furious debate in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.  The game features a hunter with a double barreled shotgun hunting down nude gay people, and shooting them before they “bugger” the game’s players.  The game, “Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!” was developed by an outfit named France 24.com, and was first launched in 2002, according to the author of the post, Neal Broverman.  Interestingly, the game has been banned in France for some time.  Defending the game, Jean Christophe Calvet who runs the Uzinagaz site that hosts the game, says, “The guy who came up with the game, Stéphane Aguie, wanted to mock hunters and rednecks, not gay men. Our games are not politically correct. They’re aimed at teenagers and it’s true that they’re of a juvenile humor. I realize now that this one in particular could be found shocking, but I believe that you should be able to make this kind of joke in the name of freedom of speech. Incidentally, not everyone in the gay community was supportive of banning the game.”  Gay Armenia, an LGBT rights group in the region, has stridently criticized the game for its playful and demeaning use of LGBT people as targets for gamers to “kill” in cyberspace.  While this is a foreign-developed and deployed video game, the virulent anti-gay culture present in many of the old Soviet republics, including the Russian Federation, makes this homophobic matter of concern even here in the United States.  The murder of Satendar Singh in July 2007 by Slavic fundamentalist Christians who emigrated to the U.S. is a notable case in point.  This is beyond twisted.  Young people are encouraged to think of gay men as sexual perverts, sub-humans, and worthy targets for murder whose very existence is a “threat” to the gamers and must be eliminated.  This is not free speech.  It is an endorsement of anti-LGBT bias, and an incitement to violence.  Bullying in middle and senior high schools is the seedbed of physical violence against gay and lesbian people later.  The infamous “gay panic defense” is also rooted in homophobic practices like this game, that teach fear and dehumanization and desensitizes youth to the exercise of physical violence.  The Unfinished Lives Project urges an international outcry against this detestable game, and any others similar to it.

July 19, 2009 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Blame the victim, Bullying in schools, gay men, gay panic defense, gun violence, harassment, Media Issues | , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Shoot Nudists Before They Bugger You”: Video Game That Targets LGBT People

Charlie Howard Remembered on the 25th Anniversary of His Murder

Charlie Howard HS photo

Charles O. "Charlie" Howard's High School Annual Picture

Charles O. “Charlie” Howard, thrown off a downtown Bangor bridge and drowned in 1984 by young hoodlums intent on terrorizing a gay person, is being remembered all week in Maine with lectures, events, and church services. After 25 years, a monument to him is finally in place near the State Street Bridge beneath which he died.  His death was terrifying and hard.  According to the autopsy report revealed at the trial of his murderers, he died of a combination of asphyxia from drowning, and from a severe attack of asthma.  Professor Marvin Ellison of Bangor Theological Seminary remembers how his killers were lauded as celebrities when the news got out.  Young toughs rode through the streets of Bangor, spewing anti-gay hate speech and brandishing shotguns.  Even so-called “decent people” adopted a wait-and-see attitude that masked their private belief that somehow the flaming gay boy with the man bag and the painted nails got what was coming to him.  The only religious groups in town who spoke out against the hatred were the Unitarian Universalists and the Jews.  It is hard to remember these things, hard on the self-image of a proud city.  But it has to be done, lest something like this happens again, and Charlie will have died in vain. As Professor Ellison said recently to the Bangor Daily News,

“Now years later, it’s a healthy sign that many more people register embarrassment, outrage and, yes, even shame that such an event happened in their city, their state and their country. For those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, we’ve learned the value of claiming the goodness of our lives and the healing power of pride. We’ve come to realize that we can honor Charlie Howard and others who have lost their lives by living our lives openly with self-respect and with determination to make the world safer for difference.”

Finally, in 2009, Maine has finally recognized same-sex marriage.  Many see this as a vindication in some small way of the pain and suffering of a young gay man ‘way back in the Reagan Era.

Rest in peace, Charlie.

July 7, 2009 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Blame the victim, drowning, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Maine, Marriage Equality, Monuments and markers, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Remembrances, Uncategorized | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Terry Mangum receives life sentence for 2007 hate crime

An article appearing in the Dallas Voice reports Terry Mangum, the murderer of 46-year-old Ken Cummings Jr., has been sentenced to life imprisonment. In June 2007, Mangum met Cummings at a gay bar in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas, went to Cummings’s home in Pearland (a metro-Houston city), and attacked his victim.

Mangum has said that he believes he was “anointed and appointed by God” to commit the murder, which entailed stabbing his victim in the head, cleaning the crime scene, moving his victim to a ranch south of San Antonio, Texas, and then burning and burying Cummings’s remains in a shallow grave. A Brazoria County reporter for The Facts tells how Mangum believes God called on him to “carry out a code of retribution” by killing a gay man because “sexual perversion” is “the worst sin.” The graphic nature of Mangum’s crime has also been reported in The Facts.

According to the Dallas Voice article, jurors in Mangum’s trial agreed the murder was a hate crime, which could make it less likely that he’ll be granted parole. As it is, Mangum won’t be eligible for parole for 30 years.

August 16, 2008 Posted by | immolation, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, religious intolerance, stabbings, Texas | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Greeley Police and the Zapata Family Speak about Angie Zapata’s Murder

View a Greeley Police press conference, where Police Chief Jerry Garner announces the arrest of Angie Zapata’s alleged killer.

In the video, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck expressed how Weld County and the City of Greeley will dedicate their best efforts to prosecute the man who murdered Angie Zapata. Buck said, “It doesn’t matter who the victim is, or whether the victim is victimized because they are a certain race, religion, sexual orientation. It’s a crime, and in Weld County, in Greeley, we’re going to do the best we can to enforce the law. It [murder] can’t be tolerated at any level.”

Buck continued, saying, “I hope that if anything positive were to come of this we would develop a stronger relationship with the gay and lesbian, transgender, community so that they understand just how seriously we take crimes like this, and how vigorously we will pursue justice in a situation like this…. We are not tolerant of people who would do harm to the residents of our town.”

Excerpts of the press conference are reported by the Greeley Tribune:

 

In this video, members of the Zapata family speak about the death of Angie Zapata:

 

In a recent article, CBS Channel 4 in Denver published this photo of Zapata’s alleged killer, Allen Ray Andrade:

 

According to the CBS Channel 4 caption, “Allen Ray Andrade, 31, faces several charges, including second-degree murder in the death of Justin Zapata, 20, who was known as Angie Zapata. Her bloodied, battered body was discovered in her apartment by her sister on July 17.”

 

 

August 6, 2008 Posted by | Bludgeoning, Colorado, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, transgender persons | , , , | Comments Off on Greeley Police and the Zapata Family Speak about Angie Zapata’s Murder

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