August 19, 2008 9:53 AM
The Reading Eagle has published some summaries of yesterday's testimony from two witnesses to the beating death of Luis Ramirez.
Elizabeth Schlack of Shenandoah testified that she heard sounds from West Lloyd Street as she watched television in her bedroom on Mount Vernon Street the night of the crime. She said she looked outside and saw that the noises were coming from the feet of three men repeatedly thudding against Ramirez’s body about 80 feet away.
The kicking continued for at least two minutes while she spoke on the telephone with emergency dispatchers, she said. She could not identify the three who were doing the kicking.
Also testifying was Eileen J. Burke, a retired Philadelphia police officer who lives near the crime scene. Burke said she heard screams, then went outside her house and recognized the defendants, who were among a group of teenage boys running from the scene. She said that before they left, Walsh and Piekarsky pounded on a vehicle driven to the scene by Arielle Garcia, whom investigators said Ramirez had called for help from his cell phone before the fight started. She said Piekarsky yelled at Garcia, "Tell your ... Mexican friends to get the ... out of Shenandoah or you’ll be ... laying next to him."
Neither of these witnesses knew Ramirez. Neither was an interested party. They both testified to the viciousness of the attack and Burke clearly related its strong racial component.
In another article, one of the six young men involved in the attack testified that after the attack the assailants congratulated one another on their fighting prowess and one showed off a metal pipe that he had apparently used to hit Ramirez.