Long Island Teen Guilty of Manslaughter in Hate Killing

Jeffrey Conroy, the white Long Island teenager accused of killing an Ecuadorean immigrant during a night of "beaner hopping," was convicted of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime yesterday in State Supreme Court. The prosecution had been hoping for a guilty verdict for the most serious charge, second-degree murder as a hate crime, which would give the judge the option of sentencing Conroy to life in prison.  With a guilty first-degree manslaughter conviction Conroy now faces a minimum of eight years to a maximum of 25 years of time with the Aryan Brotherhood behind bars.  In addition to the manslaughter charge, Conroy was convicted of attempted assault against three other area Latinos, one of them Lucero's friend who had been with him that night.

Another Hate Crime Against a Latino in Patchogue, NY

Matthew Mont (L) and Curt Hatton (Newsday)

Last year Patchogue, New York was host to the vicious stabbing death of Marcelo Lucero, a 37 year-old immigrant from Ecuador, at the hands of 7 teenagers from the area. Today two more teens from Patchogue were arraigned on charges of assault in a separate incident that has reminded many of last year's hate crime. Curt Hatton, 19, and Matthew Mont, 16, are charged along with 20 year old Ramon Rodriguez stemming from an incident on August 14 in which the three are accused of beating an Ecuadorian man and robbing him while hurling racial epithets.

When Lucero was killed last year, it sparked a lot of controversy in the community and shone a light on the shady business of "beaner hopping," in which Patchogue youth would apparently go out looking for men of Latino descent to harass and assault for fun. When a meeting was held at the school where the teens attended (Medford-Patchogue High), things got heated when parents started to complain about the media and a Newsday reporter was forcibly removed from the auditorium. The focus should have been on how something like that could have happened in their community, not that the media was paying attention to the despicable act.

Ramon Rodriguez, the first person arrested and charged
(Newsday)

Now less than a year later we have a very similar incident, with teenagers from Medford-Patchogue High School arrested for assaulting an Ecuadorian in the same neighborhood where Marcelo Lucero was killed. In the previously cited Newsday article, some parents are quoted as saying, "This is not a racist town," or "Now my daughter's embarrassed to go to this school because people are going to incorrectly label it racist." I'm not saying that the town or school is racist, but we're less than a year after Lucero's murder, national media attention, and the beginning of a DOJ investigation and this is still happening? A similar incident happened right after Lucero's murder last year, in which 8 youths yelled racial slurs at two Latinos leaving a restaurant and pushed one of them (yes, this happened less than two weeks after Lucero's murder). After the incident last November, Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri stated, "It is very alarming that after the incident of two weeks ago [Lucero's murder] there are still people who have not gotten the message." It seems some of them still may not have gotten it.

Was Marcelo Lucero the Tip of the Iceberg?

On Wednesday Suffolk County prosecutors announced even more charges against the seven teens accused of beating and killing Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero. The accused, Jeffrey Conroy (17, the principle defendant who is accused of plunging a knife into Lucero's chest as his friends beat the victim), Christopher Overton (16), Jose Pacheco (17), Kevin Shea (17), Nicholas Hausch (17), Jordan Dasch (17), and Anthony Hartford (17) face more charges in connection with incidents in which Latino men were beaten unconscious and robbed, beaten with a pipe while being told he would be killed, and held down while being slashed with a knife. Prosecutors say that the teens went on violent sprees that targeted Latinos for 13 months before the Lucero killing.

Many questions arise from this. One of them is: were these incidents fully investigated? If this was going on for thirteen months did no one know what was going on? Some have stated that the Suffolk Police Department did not do enough when the racially-motivated attacks were reported. This could very well be true, but there is no objective way to prove this and there is no possible way to know if more intense investigations of the previous attacks would have prevented Lucero's death.  To argue one way or another may vent anger or emotions, but very little progress towards justice would be made.

One question worth investigating: who knew about this? If the police did not follow up the way they should have, they know it and have to live with that decision because in the back of their minds, they know they did not do their job. And those who knew of the "beaner hopping" of these misguided teens should feel ashamed, for if they had reported such repugnant behavior maybe Marcelo Lucero would be alive. These people know who they are.

All of this being said, if there are people who a) know that these seven kids did this or b) know that there are other people out there doing this you have a moral responsibility to come forward. If you don't you are implicit in their cowardly actions. As Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." A good read for those who are on the fence about reporting their peers is "The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden. Don't expect anyone to speak up for you if you remain silent while others are victimized.


The suspects' bails were raised given the new revelations about the previous year's attacks. Hopefully these cases will result in convictions of these bigots and they will spend a lot of time in prison for taking a violent and racist yearlong journey to the cold-blooded murder of Marcelo Lucero. The ultimate irony of a conviction for these teens would be that they would go from a society where they are the majority and felt able to take advantage of a minority into a society where they are the minority (in 2001 whites made up 16% of prisoners while Latinos made up 31% of prisoners and in 2005 80% of New York inmates were black or Latino) and may suffer similar abuses that they inflicted upon their minority counterparts. Peace.

Photos - Nicholas Hausch, Christopher Overton, Jordan Dasch, Anthony Hartford, and Jose Pacheco (l. to r.) (New York Times)

Medford-Patchogue Continues to Cope with Racially Motivated Murder

More charges - and details - have emerged in the murder of Marcelo Lucero at the hands of 7 teens from Eastern Long Island. According to prosecutors, they are looking into whether some of the teens charged in the beating of Lucero had been involved in another beating of another immigrant. The seven teens apparently made a habit of going out and hunting down defenseless Latino residents to harass and beat on, referring to it as "beaner hopping." One of the defendants, Jose Pacheco, 17, admits to going out with two of the other defendants, Anthony Hartford and Kevin Shea, and knocking out a Latino man cold (the victim has yet to step forward). Pacheco perplexingly told authorities that it was a rarity for him to go out and do something like this: "I don't go out and do this very often, maybe once a week."

What is funny is that a lot of people are coming out and saying, "Oh, some of these kids can't be racist - they have Latino backgrounds," or "Look, they hang out with people of other races." Your background has nothing to do with whether you're a racist or not - your mindset does. If you do not like a person because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity or whatever, you're bigoted; it doesn't matter if you happen to share that skin color or ethnicity. And even if you hang out with people of other races, you can still be racist. If you go "beaner hopping" and attack innocent Latinos because of their ethnic background it does not matter who you hang out with. Let's put it this way: think about Southern slave owners. Some were very close personally to their slaves, some of them even had affairs with them (*cough* Thomas Jefferson *cough*). Would you argue that these Southern slave owners were not racist? Yet they hung out with people from other races and even fathered children with them.

One would think that this would be a time of reflection and deep introspection for the residents of the Patchogue-Medford area. But if the meeting held at the high school to discuss the incident is any indication, the human tendency to blame others when the shit hits the fan is alive and well. According to Newsday, many parents in the crowd at the meeting blamed the media attention that the ruthless attack has brought upon the community. A Newsday reporter, who was invited by principal Manuel Sanzone, began to be screamed at by the crowd and was physically removed by security despite making it clear that she had been invited by the principal who was holding the meeting. Meanwhile, the principal stood silent as the reporter was removed. If you can't even stand up to the forcible removal of a reporter you invited to the meeting, how are you going to stand up to prejudice and intolerance that led to the murder of an innocent man?

And today the New York Times came out with an article about the person who physically stabbed Lucero - Jeffrey Conroy - filled with quotes from family members and family friends saying the usual, "Oh my, I cannot believe it was him; he was such a good boy." Unfortunately for a lot of people, the way they act in public with their families and the way they act in private with their friends can be night and day (this case seems emblematic of that). Conroy could have been a great family member and all of that, but it does not change the fact that he plunged a knife into the chest of a man who had the audacity of being Latino. This is a kid who, according to police reports, has a swastika tattooed on his leg and was the ringleader of the "Caucasian Crew." Additionally, the Times article states that youths who additionally came forward and defended Conroy have backed off of these statements and have said that they were not, in fact, friends with him. One could see that coming, considering the Post had a picture of the accused group's "friends" running out of court, shielding their faces because they were ashamed to be friends with people who could do such things (because why would they shield their face if they believed that the men were innocent and being unfairly targeted by prosecutors?).

So while the charges have been upgraded for those involved - namely Conroy, who now faces second-degree murder as a hate crime - the six who were beating Lucero while Conroy stabbed him are still not being charged with murder, or at least manslaughter, and I ask, "Why not?" Their reckless actions led to the death of Marcelo Lucero and at the very least they are guilty of manslaughter. It's clear that not one of these individuals value human life (one of them was already involved in the death of somebody else). Hopefully as the anger dies down - and people stop blaming the media - the Patchogue-Medford community will be able to heal and move on from this hateful murder. Peace.

Photos - Jose Lucero, Marcelo's brother (New York Times), Jeffrey Conroy (center, in red) with his football team (New York Times), Marcel Lucero (Newsday), "Friends" of the 7 accused teens leaving the Patchogue courthouse (New York Post)

Seven Long Island Teens Kill Ecuadorean Immigrant in Hate Crime

Seven eastern Long Island teenagers face serious charges after they set out to "beat up some Mexicans" and ended up killing 37 year-old Ecuadorean immigrant Marcello Lucero. Lucero worked at a dry cleaners in Riverhead and was near the Patchogue train station when he was approached by the seven teens - a junior and six seniors from Patchogue-Medford High School - and was beat up. The assault culminated in a knife being pushed through Lucero's chest, allegedly by 17 year-old Jeffrey Conroy. The teens were arrested shortly after the assault nearby.

Suffolk County officials have charged the teens with hate crimes, and the prosecutor seems to be quoting the young men when he talks about their desire to do harm to someone of Mexican descent, leading me to believe that some type of confession or something similar has been offered up. A profile of the young men have come out. The alleged stabber - Conroy - is a three sport athlete at Patchogue-Medford and does not have a record. At least two of the teens have a Latino background - one being half-Puerto Rican and another having a half-Puerto Rican grandmother. The mother of one of the suspects claimed, "How can it be a hate crime? My son is half-Hispanic?" When it comes to the law, however, it does not matter what ethnicity you are; if you target someone based solely on certain immutable characteristics (ethnicity being one of them) you are guilty of a hate crime. It also does not matter if you are incorrect (as in this case, when the teens went to target a Mexican and killed an Ecuadorean) as long as your intent was based on the aforementioned set of immutable characteristics.

What is perplexing about this case - beyond the fact that people like this still exist in society - is that one of the teens is already involved in a fatal home burglary, in which the victim was 38 year-old Carlton Shaw and was found outside his home with his three year-old son asleep at his side. Overton eventually pled down to burglary in that case. My question is why is someone who is involved in a fatal burglary not in jail awaiting sentencing? Given that he was out of jail, why would his parents allow him out of the house? Are there no repercussions for his behavior? Did he not have a court-ordered curfew or some kind of sanctions because of his admittance of guilt in a case that led to a man's death?

Another perplexing thing is that while all seven teens are charged with gang assault as a hate crime, only one (Conroy) is charged with manslaughter as a hate crime. Why aren't all seven charged with manslaughter? In another case happening in New York, three men are charged with the death of NYPD officer Russel Timoshenko, despite the fact that only one of the three shot at the deceased officer. The definition of manslaughter in the second degree is "when he recklessly causes the death of another person." It was certainly reckless to go and "beat up some Mexicans" and it resulted in the death of a human being. It seems that the teens acted in concert (in that they surrounded Lucero and all beat on him before he was stabbed) and were all arrested together after the incident.

If these teens do not spend the majority of their adult lives behind bars, something is seriously amiss with this system. When you have such little regard for human life that you go out and beat on a man due to his ethnicity - resulting in his death - what use do you serve society other than as an example of what is wrong? What is sad is that it seems that Conroy could have had a future (the others could have, too, but the Newsday article seemed to focus on him), but he threw it all away on something stupid like this. And while the government certainly has a responsibility when it comes to dangerous individuals being out on the streets (in this case, the example of Overton), parents do not get off scot free. Schools don't raise kids, government programs don't raise kids, video games and television don't raise kids; parents do. I feel for some parents, because they try everything they can and still their kid screws up; other times the parents don't get involved as much as they should with their kids' lives and the kid screws up (I've personally seen both examples). I'm not going to judge the parents of these teens because I do not know them and that would be unfair. At the end of the day, a mother is without a son, a brother without his brother, because of the incredibly selfish acts of a group of teenagers with no regard for others. Hopefully these teens are locked up for a long time and cannot terrorize others again. Peace.

Photos - The seven teens being led out of a police station for their arraignment in Islip on Monday (Newsday), Victim Marcello Lucero (ABC News), A memorial set up to commemorate Lucero at the stabbing scene (1010WINS)