Hate Crimes Continue:  Another Man Murdered in New York

December 11th, 2008

Following on the heels of November's brutal battery and murder of Marcelo Lucero in Suffolk County, NY, another senseless death has provoked outrage in communities across the nation.  Two Ecuadorean brothers were assaulted on December 8 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.  One of the brothers, a business man who had lived in the U.S. for ten years, was admitted to a hospital in very critical condition early Sunday morning and died on Tuesday as a result of his injuries.  The deceased, Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhanay, was the co-owner of a real estate agency in Bushwick and a native of Ecuador who legally immigrated to the U.S.

According to a third Sucuzhanay brother who resides in Brooklyn, Jose and Romel went to a party at their church on Saturday night where they had dinner and drinks.  They then went to a bar and, according to the police report, were walking home arm-in-arm when the assailants pulled up in a car and began yelling anti-Latino and anti-gay slurs at them.

Jose and Romel were just half a block away from home when three men began attacking the two brothers.  The assailants broke a beer bottle across Jose's head before turning on his brother to continue the attack.   Romel, who was visiting from Ecuador, barely escaped as the attackers turned on his incapacitated brother. Knocked to the ground by the initial attack, Jose was beaten, kicked, and hit repeatedly with an aluminum baseball bat.

This is yet another tragic, sobering example of reality of hate crimes in our country, the result of both anti-Latino and homophobic attitudes; this is the second murder that has occurred in only a handful of weeks.  These killings have to stop.  We are better than this, and the only way to advance America is to move forward as a united entity-this discriminatory culture of hate has got to stop.