New York Hate Crime

New York Times, December 8, 2008

Attack on Ecuadorean Brothers Investigated as Hate Crime
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
The two brothers from Ecuador had attended a church party and had stopped at a bar afterward. They may have been a bit tipsy as they walked home in the dead of night, arm-in-arm, leaning close to each other, a common tableau of men in Latino cultures, but one easily misinterpreted by the biased mind.
Suddenly a car drew up. It was 3:30 a.m. Sunday, and the intersection of Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a half-block from the brothers’ apartment, was nearly deserted — but not quite. Witnesses, the police said, heard some of what happened next.
Three men came out of the car shouting at the brothers, Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay — something ugly, anti-gay and anti-Latino. Vulgarisms against Hispanics and gay men were heard by witnesses, the police said. One man approached Jose Sucuzhanay, 31, the owner of a real estate agency who has been in New York a decade, and broke a beer bottle over the back of his head. He went down hard.
Romel Sucuzhanay, 38, who is visiting from Ecuador on a two-month visa, bounded over a parked car and ran as the man with the broken bottle came at him. A distance away, he looked back and saw a second assailant beating his prone brother with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him repeatedly on the head and body. The man with the broken bottle turned back and joined the beating and kicking.
“They used a baseball bat,” said Diego Sucuzhanay, another brother. “I guess the goal was to kill him.”
At least five calls were made to 911. As police sirens wailed in the distance, the assailants, described only as black men by the police, jumped into their maroon or red-orange Honda sport utility vehicle and sped away. Jose Sucuzhanay was listed on Monday in very critical condition at Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was on life support systems and in a coma after an operation for skull fractures and extensive brain damage.
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As word of the ferocious attack spread on Monday, an outpouring of anger and protest swept the city, from members of the City Council, the State Legislature and Congress; from religious, labor and civil rights organizations; from Latino and gay groups; and from the Ecuadorean and Hispanic communities.
“This won’t be tolerated,” Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, said at a news conference on the steps of City Hall that drew dozens of public officials and leaders of civil rights groups. “We cannot and we will not let hate go unchecked in our city.”
The condemnations were amplified by Council members Diana Reyna, Rosie Mendez, Melissa Mark-Viverito, G. Oliver Koppell, David Yassky, Miguel Martinez, Gale A. Brewer, Daniel R. Garodnick, David I. Weprin and Letitia James; by Representative Nydia M. Valazquez, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo, officials of the New York City Central Labor Council, the NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, and by Jewish, Catholic and Protestant leaders.
A spokesman for Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said the prosecutor was “shocked and appalled by this senseless, bigoted, brutal act,” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Because of the antigay and anti-Latino epithets shouted by the assailants, the police said they were investigating the case as a hate crime.
“Once more, we hear hate crimes,” said Carlos Zamora, president of the Ecuadorean Civil Center of New York. He recalled the fatal stabbing of Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadorean, in Patchogue, N.Y., on Nov. 8, in an attack by seven teenage boys who said they had driven around looking for Latinos to beat up. Seven youths have been arrested in that case and have pleaded not guilty to various charges.
The victim, Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhanay, the co-owner of Open Realty International, a real estate agency in Bushwick, was described by family members as a gentle, generous man, a father of two children who live with his parents in Azogues, Ecuador, his native town. He lives on Kossuth Place, in a building that is also home to his brother Diego and a sister, Blanca Naranjo. The victim’s girlfriend, Amada, arrived about six months ago and has been staying with Mr. Sucuzhanay.
Diego Sucuzhanay said that his brother, one of 12 siblings, came to New York 10 years ago “because there were job opportunities.” He said Jose worked as a restaurant waiter for seven years, and founded his real estate agency several years ago. “He helped this community,” he said. “He loved Bushwick.”
On Saturday night, Diego Sucuzhanay said, Jose and Romel, who had been staying with Jose, went to a party at St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church on Linden Street at St. Nicholas Avenue in Bushwick, a neighborhood with a large Ecuadorean community, and later had dinner at a restaurant and then drinks at La Vega, a bar at 1260 Myrtle Avenue, near Cedar Street, five blocks from the victim’s home.
They left the bar before 3:30 a.m., said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, and were walking arm-in-arm. Despite the cold, the men were dressed lightly: Romel wore a tank top and Jose was wearing a T-shirt. One or both may have had a jacket slung over their shoulders, officials said.
They reached the intersection of Bushwick and Kossuth as the assailant’s car drew up at a stoplight. As the driver and two other men got out, Romel Sucuzhanay and another witness heard the shouted slurs. Romel Sucuzhanay, who was not seriously injured, had a cellphone but did not know the number for calling the police. He shouted to the attackers that he was calling the police.
One of those who called 911, Hiram Nieves, a retired store owner, said that he and his wife heard loud noises in the street.
“We heard bang, bang, bang,” as Mr. Sucuzhanay was being pounded with the bat, “and people were running from one side to the other,” he said. After the attack, he said, he saw one of the men throw something into the S.U.V. and get in with the others. The victim, he said, “was laying there, he wasn’t moving.”
Then a lot of people emerged from their homes on Kossuth Place, Mr. Nieves said, moving around the man lying in the street.
Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, David W. Chen, Kareem Fahim, Ann Farmer, Karen Zraick.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 11, 2008
An article on Tuesday about an attack on two Ecuadorean brothers in Brooklyn that is being investigated as a hate crime misspelled the given name of a city councilwoman who condemned the attack and the given name of another Ecuadorean immigrant who was fatally stabbed last month on Long Island in what prosecutors say was also a hate crime. The councilwoman is Melissa Mark-Viverito, not Merlissa, and the Long Island victim was Marcelo Lucero, not Marcello.


New York Post February 27, 2009
The NYPD is hoping to get the last laugh in the case of a savage anti-gay hate crime.
An image from a chilling video released yesterday shows a Bronx man giggling to his heart's content - just 19 minutes after he allegedly beat a man to death with a baseball bat.
Keith Phoenix, 28, was all smiles as he pulled into a cash-toll lane at a Triborough Bridge tollbooth on Dec. 7 after he beat Ecuadorian immigrant José Sucuzhanay to death on a Brooklyn street, police said.
As cops hunted Phoenix, his alleged accomplice, 25-year-old Hakim Scott, also of The Bronx, was charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime and held without bail.
The duo apparently believed that Sucuzhanay, 31, and his brother Romel - who were huddling as they walked home in the cold - were homosexual and yelled anti-gay slurs before setting upon them with a beer bottle and an aluminum baseball bat.
"We know that the arrest will not bring my brother back, but at least we know that justice is on its way," said Diego Sucuzhanay, another brother of the victim, at a rally with Ecuadorian diplomats and NYPD brass outside the Central American nation's consulate in Manhattan.
Diego said he delivered the good news about the arrest to his mother, who takes care of José's two children back in Ecuador. One of the kids has Down syndrome.
"Thank God we have someone behind bars, so he won't hurt anyone else," was her response, Diego said.
A team of detectives tracked down Scott, thanks to an eyewitness who jotted down the license plate of the car in which the attackers fled. Cops pulled vehicle records to determine that Phoenix's girlfriend was the car's owner.
Scott was collared near his home on East 161st Street and allegedly admitted to the attack - but denied they were looking to beat up Hispanics or gays.
He was identified in a lineup by an eyewitness, cops said.
"We're going to wait and see what the evidence is," Scott's lawyer, Craig Newman, told reporters at Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Citing the "extreme viciousness of this crime," Assistant DA Josh Hanshaft asked Judge Stephanie Zaro to lock Scott up without bail.
Meanwhile, friends of the victim, who worked as a real-estate agent to send money back home to his children, have set up a fund to aid his family.
Information is available by sending an e-mail message to mail@arrufatlaw.com.
douglas.montero@nypost.com