Immigration Flashpoints

April 22nd, 2006 – Houston, TX

David Ritcheson, 16, is attacked by racist skinheads at a house party after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. David Henry Tuck breaks Ritcheson's jaw, knocking him unconscious, while screaming, "white power!" and calling Ritcheson a "spic" and "wetback." Keith Robert Turner joins in, and the two attackers burn Ritcheson with cigarettes, kick him with steel-toed boots, attempt to carve a swastika into his chest, pour bleach on him, and finally violently sodomize him with a patio umbrella pole. It takes 30 surgeries before Ritcheson, confined to a wheelchair and wearing a colostomy bag, is able to return to school.

Tuck is later sentenced to life in prison. Turner gets 90 years.

A year after the attack, Ritcheson, who up to that point has not been identified in press accounts by name, goes public and speaks out to the U.S. House of Representative's Judiciary Committee. In wrenching testimony, the boy recalls the horrific experience for lawmakers deliberating over strengthening federal hate crime laws. "With my humiliation and emotional and physical scars came the ambition and strong sense of determination that brought out the natural fighter in me," Ritcheson testifies. "I am glad to tell you today that my best days still lay ahead of me."

Less than three months later, the teenager commits suicide, jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico. Before his death, he assisted the Anti-Defamation League in creating an anti-hate program at his alma mater, Klein Collins High School.