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Murder Trial Begins in Case of Ecuadorian Immigrant Allegedly Killed in Hate Attack

Posted April 21, 2010 by Ted Hesson
Categories: Hate Watch, Categories: New York

On Monday, the jury in the trial of Jeffrey Conroy found the 19-year-old Medford resident guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the November 2008 hate killing of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero.

Yesterday, another hate crime trial began in Brooklyn, in which two men allegedly beat an Ecuadorian man to death because of his ethnicity and the perception that he was gay.

The men allegedly saw Josè Sucuzhañay hugging and holding hands with his brother, Romel, and decided to leave their SUV and attack the brothers, who had attended a church party earlier that night and were walking home in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

The two defendants—Keith Phoenix, 30, and Hakim Scott, 26—allegedly beat the brothers with a bottle and a baseball bat. Josè died from the beating; Romel was not seriously hurt.

Both Phoenix and Scott are charged with murder as a hate crime, and have pleaded not guilty. Before the trial, Phoenix claimed that he acted in self-defense because he thought he saw Josè Sucuzhañay reach for a weapon.

The New York Times’ Kareen Fahim reports on the first day of testimony in the trial:

A taxi driver testified on Tuesday that he had a clear view when an Ecuadorean immigrant was fatally beaten in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn — a killing that prosecutors said was motivated by hate.

The driver, Davi Almonte, said he was waiting for a traffic light to change when he saw two Hispanic men walking and hugging each other. The next minute, he said, two other men who had pulled up in a sports utility vehicle attacked one of the Hispanic men, first with a bottle, then with their feet and finally with a bat.

The bat was swung seven or eight times, and even with his windows rolled up, Mr. Almonte said, he “could hear the impacts” and finally had to stop watching. “I didn’t want to see his head bleeding or explode,” he explained.

Tags : brooklyn, hate crimes, jose sucuzhanay

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