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Tempers still boiling two weeks after trial in Mexican's death
By Ian Urbina
New York Times
Published on Sunday, May 17, 2009
SHENANDOAH, PA.: Ten days ago, shortly after two white teenagers were acquitted of the most serious charges in the beating death of Luis Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant, Felix Bermejo says several white students at the local high school told him he would be the next person to get a beating.
Last Sunday, Eileen Burke, a former Philadelphia police officer who found Ramirez unconscious on the ground outside her Lloyd Street home after he was beaten, discovered that her car had been egged after she was quoted in a local newspaper as saying she believed that the police had mishandled the investigation.
Last week, a fight broke out between a group of white teenagers and a group of black and Hispanic teenagers and someone pulled out a gun, an escalation that several onlookers said never would have happened before.
The trial stemming from Ramirez's death ended nearly two weeks ago, but tensions boil in this coal town of 5,100, where Mexicans and other Hispanics have been settling in search of affordable housing and work in the mines or apple and peach farms.
''It's only gotten worse since the verdict,'' said a white woman at a downtown store who asked that her name not be used because she was afraid of how her neighbors might react to her having talked to a reporter. ''The whole thing has set us backwards, and if the trial had swung the other way, it would have just been the whites who were angry.''
Closure in the matter is not likely to come soon. A federal investigation of the crime and the police's handling of it is under way. National Hispanic organizations have begun a petition calling for the Justice Department to bring federal hate crime charges against the assailants and have called for the Senate to pass legislation strengthening the federal hate crime law. Similar legislation was passed by the House last month.
While many white residents said there were no racial tensions locally except those being sparked by news coverage and claims from out-of-town civil rights groups, Hispanics offered a different view.
''This town is a place where people can be very kind, but there are also a lot of folks who don't like change and they don't like people who are different, and they make sure you know it,'' said Fermin Bermejo, 44, Felix's father.
Ramirez, an illegal immigrant and a 25-year-old farmhand and factory worker, was beaten on July 12, the authorities say, in a fight that started after several football players from the local high school who had been drinking made remarks to the 15-year-old girl walking with him.
The authorities say the teenagers yelled ethnic slurs as they punched and kicked Ramirez, who died from the injuries two days later in the hospital.
On May 1, an all-white jury acquitted Brandon Piekarsky, 17, of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation and Derrick Donchak, 19, of aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation.
Both were convicted of simple assault, a misdemeanor.
SHENANDOAH, PA.: Ten days ago, shortly after two white teenagers were acquitted of the most serious charges in the beating death of Luis Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant, Felix Bermejo says several white students at the local high school told him he would be the next person to get a beating.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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rootstown, oh
Posted 12:42 PM, 05/17/2009
bad prosecutor.
