You were right.......these young guys were upstanding members of their local football team. The Mexican was vicious....calling them cracker and whitie. They begged him to stop....when he wouldn't, they had no choice but to beat him to death. Isn't that what you want to believe, o wise one?
Now for the real story.....the teenage crackers killed the Mexican because they don't like Mexicans. BTW the Mexican was half the size of one of these guys....completely out of shape. I always love the way these football players pick on guys that are much smaller than them.....and then it has to be 4 to 1. They must have to compensate for their wee ones.
After their arrest, two of the teen crackers tried to frame a third. The third got wind of what they were up to and turned state's evidence. Oh, and the jury foremen said after the trail, that the jury had all kinds of racial bias against Mexicans and blacks in the town.
There will be a federal investigation and the crackers will get their due. Sorry to disappoint.....
Pa. teen who punched Mexican immigrant cuts deal
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM – 6 days ago
POTTSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Almost from the beginning, Colin Walsh thought his friends were setting him up to take the fall for Luis Ramirez's death.
It was true that Walsh, a standout high school football player, had knocked the illegal Mexican immigrant unconscious with a single blow to the head during a wild, epithet-filled brawl. But Walsh wasn't the only assailant that night. And so he made the decision to cooperate with investigators — cutting a deal that could get him out of prison in four years.
On Tuesday, Walsh, 17, testified against two teenage friends charged in connection with the fatal beating of Ramirez, a 25-year-old factory worker and farmhand from Iramuco, Mexico.
Prosecutors say a group of white football players, including Walsh and the teens on trial, shouted ethnic slurs at Ramirez as they punched and kicked him in the small eastern Pennsylvania coal town of Shenandoah last summer.
Defense attorneys say Ramirez was the aggressor and deny their clients made any derogatory comments about his ethnicity. In fact, none of the witnesses so far has pinned any specific slurs on either Brandon Piekarsky, 17, or Derrick Donchak, 19.
Walsh had been charged in state court with third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation, but Schuylkill County District Attorney James Goodman dropped the charges earlier this month after Walsh pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Ramirez's civil rights.
On the witness stand Tuesday, Walsh said his deal calls for nine years in federal prison, but that he could be out in four because of his cooperation in the trial of Piekarsky and Donchak.
Piekarsky's attorney, Frederick Fanelli, seized on the deal as evidence that Walsh was out to save his own skin. "You are off the hook on these charges, scot-free, aren't you?" Fanelli said. "You're hoping to turn a (potential) life sentence into four years, right?"
"Hoping, yes," Walsh said.
Walsh said it became clear within a day of the July 12 fight that his lifelong friends were minimizing their own roles and telling police that he was the lone attacker.
"It was all going to be about me," he said.
Prosecutors say Piekarsky, who is charged with third-degree murder, kicked Ramirez in the head after Walsh punched him. Donchak is accused of aggravated assault. Both are charged with ethnic intimidation.
Walsh, Piekarsky and Donchak were out drinking malt liquor with friends when they ran across Ramirez and his 15-year-old girlfriend near a park.
Another teen, Brian Scully, told the girl, "Isn't it a little late for you to be out?" That prompted Ramirez to yell something in Spanish, beginning a war of words that escalated into a full-scale brawl.
Scully, 18, who is charged in juvenile court with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation, testified Tuesday that he shouted ethnic slurs at Ramirez and told him to "go back to Mexico." Scully said Piekarsky threw the first punch, and that Piekarsky and Donchak both traded blows with Ramirez. (Defense attorneys have said Ramirez started the fight.)
After that round of fighting ended, Ramirez and the teens began walking in opposite directions. But Scully, who was bringing up the rear of his group, continued to shout at Ramirez — who in turn sprinted back and began throwing punches at Scully.
That's when Walsh punched Ramirez in the face, causing him to fall backward and hit his head on the macadam. As Ramirez lay motionless, his hands to his side and his eyes closed, Scully — who'd just been on the receiving end of Ramirez's blows — said he tried to kick the immigrant but missed.
Piekarsky connected, kicking Ramirez in the head, according to testimony from Scully, Walsh and a third teen who was there but did not participate in the attack.
"I was shocked," Walsh said. "I ran away. It wasn't really right what he did, to kick a man when he was down."
Despite his guilty plea, Walsh said he continues to feel his punch was justified because Ramirez had attacked his friend.
"I went over to Scully and he pushed Ramirez off and I hit him. I looked him right in the eye. I didn't sucker-punch him," Walsh said.
Defense attorneys probed a number of inconsistencies in the testimony, suggesting that witnesses were too drunk that night to remember clearly. Witnesses have variously said that Ramirez was kicked in the right side of the head and the left, and that Ramirez took off his shirt before the fighting began and kept it on.
Jurors will also have to decide what caused Ramirez's death — Walsh's punch or the subsequent kick, if they believe one occurred.
Before testimony began, President Judge William Baldwin told jurors they were forbidden to watch Wednesday night's episode of "Law & Order" because of similarities between the Ramirez case and the NBC show's plot, which focuses on a trio of high school basketball players charged with killing an illegal immigrant.
"I don't think it's an accident they're running it this week," he said.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. |
