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One Campus, One Book 2013

Significant Hate Crimes

SOME SIGNIFICANT HATE CRIME CASES

August 28, 1955 Emmett Till, 14, from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he allegedly whistled at a white woman. The woman’s husband and brother-in-law, along with as many as 20 other men, beat and tortured him. His body was found three days later, mutilated and waterlogged. Murderers Bryant and Millam were tried for the murder and acquitted. Protected by double indemnity, they later confessed. Emmett Till’s murder is considered to be a major impetus for the Civil Rights Movement. Southern Poverty Law Center web site

July 4, 1991 Paul Broussard, a 27-year-old banker, became the "first" reported gay hate crime victim in Houston, Texas. Ten young males, nine of whom were high school students, went to the predominantly gay Montrose section of Houston to "go beat up some queers." Armed with a knife, steel tipped boots, and a 2x4 spiked with nails the group accosted three gay men. Broussard succumbed to stab wounds he sustained in the attack. huffingtonpost.com 12 Oct 2009

October 27, 1992 Navy officials in Japan said that Seaman Allen R. Schindler, 22, might have been a victim of gay bashing. Schindler was beaten to death in a public restroom three blocks from the Navy base at Sasebo, Japan. Schindler's mother said that her son was beaten beyond recognition. L.A. Times 9 Jan 1993

December 31, 1993 Teena Brandon [Brandon Teena] was a twenty-one-year-old woman who dressed "like a male." On December 24, 1993, John Lotter and Marvin Nissen raped and brutally assaulted Brandon. On December 31, 1993, Lotter and Nissen broke into the home where Brandon was staying and fatally shot and stabbed Brandon and two others who were present in the home. Brandon’s story became the basis of the film Boys Don’t Cry. brandonteena.org

June 7, 1998 James Byrd Jr., 49, of Jasper, Texas, accepted a ride from three white men. Instead of taking him home, the three men beat Byrd behind a convenience store, stripped him naked, chained him by the ankles to their pickup truck and dragged him for three miles over rural roads outside Jasper. Forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had been attempting to keep his head up while being dragged, and an autopsy suggests that Byrd was alive during much of the dragging. Byrd died after his right arm and head are severed after his body hit a culvert. His body had caught a sewage drain on the side of the road, resulting in his decapitation. Human Rights Campaign web site

October 12, 1998 University of Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard, 21, of Laramie, met two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, at a bar; they drove him to a remote area east of Laramie where they robbed him and tied him to a split-rail fence. They beat him violently because of his sexual orientation, and left him to die in the cold night. Almost 18 hours later, a cyclist found him. Shepard died in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. This murder and that of James Byrd has led to Hate Crime legislation. Human Rights Campaign website

February 19, 1999 Billy Jack Gaither, 39, of Sylacauga, Alabama, was murdered by two men known for wearing KKK T-shirts because Gaither allegedly made a homosexual pass at one of them. The men stuffed Gaither into the trunk of his own car and drove 30 miles to a remote area where they bludgeoned him to death with an ax handle, then burned his body on a pyre of blazing tires. Newsweek 14 Mar 1999

August 10, 1999 Buford Furrow walked into the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills and opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon where he injured two adults and three children. The shootings ended with the death of a postal worker because he thought he was Latino or Asian. Furrow wanted his shooting “to be a wake-up call for America to kill Jews." L.A. Times 6 May 2000

July 5, 1999 Pfc. Barry L. Winchell of the 101st Airborne Infantry was murdered in his bed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. His killer, a nineteen year old fellow soldier struck him with savage ferocity wielding a Louisville Slugger baseball bat.  Four months earlier, Winchell, who identified as straight, became romantically involved with a transsexual woman in nearby Nashville. Winchell’s story became the basis of the film, Soldier’s Girl. huffingtonpost.com 6 July 2009

October 3, 2002 A trans-gendered woman, Gwen Aruajo, 17, of Newark, California, was cornered by four men in a bathroom where the men, having expressed doubts about her sexuality, brutally beat her and strangled her, and then buried her in a shallow grave in the Sierra foothills. Two of the defendants were charged with first-degree murder in a hate crime; their defenders asked the jury to consider “gay panic.” The perpetrators were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. SF Gate 16 May 2004

April 22, 2006 In Houston, Texas, David Ritcheson, 16, was attacked by racist skinheads after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. The attackers broke Ritcheson's jaw, burned him with cigarettes, kicked him with steel-toed boots, attempt to carve a swastika into his chest, pour bleach on him and finally violently sodomized him. Ritcheson survived and later testified in front of the U.S. House of Representative's Judiciary Committee.  Less than three months later, he committed suicide. Southern Poverty Law Center website

June 15, 2006 In Yonkers, N.Y., Miguel Vega, a native of Peru, was attacked and murdered by five men while walking down his street. The killers were charged with murder and robbery. Bendezu, Mitchell, and Lopez's charges were upgraded to hate crimes after an investigation found that they specifically sought a Mexican to rob that night. All five plead guilty and were sentenced to between five and 15 years. Southern Poverty Law Center website

December 15, 2006 Cheryl Green, 14, of Los Angeles, was killed and three others wounded in a shooting by four members of the Latino 204th street gang. Green was killed when Ernesto Alcarez opened fire on a group of African American teenagers. Alcarez was found guilty of the hate crime murder and sentenced to 238 years to life in prison. L.A Times 20 June 2012

February 12, 2008 Larry King of Oxnard, CA, 15, had recently begun wearing makeup and jewelry to school and had declared himself as gay.  A classmate, Brandon McInerny, 14, brought a handgun into a computer classroom and shot King in the back of the head twice.  Prosecutors charged McInerny with the murder as a pre-meditated hate crime. L.A. Times 15 Feb 2008

June 10, 2009 James Wenneker Von Brunn, 89, entered the United States Holocaust Museum and shot police guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, killing him. Von Brunn was a known white supremacist and holocaust denier.  He was charged with murder including civil rights and hate crime violations and died in custody awaiting his trial. FBI website

August 5, 2012 White supremacist, Wade Page, 40, of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, went on a shooting rampage after walking into a Sikh temple, killing six and wounding three others. Page killed himself after police responded to 911 calls. “Everyone here is thinking this is a hate crime for sure,” said Manjit Singh, who goes to a different temple in the region. “People think we are Muslims.” N.Y. Times 6 Aug 2012

February 26, 2012 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was returning to his father's fiancée's townhome in Sanford, Florida when he was shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. Charged with second-degree murder, Zimmerman was acquitted by the jury in the state criminal trial. The Justice Department has begun to investigate it as a federal hate crime. The case has led to a possible repeal of Florida's Stand Your Ground self-defense law. NY Times 14 July 2013

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