What makes a seemingly normal 17-year old high school student-athlete take a knife and stab an innocent Ecuadorian immigrant in a dark parking lot near the Long Island Railroad? Does anything make sense about that?
(Pictured, Jose Lucero, brother of victim Marcelo Lucero in the Suffolk County courtroom during the Jeffrey Conroy's indictment back in November 2008)
Two of many questions floating along the stream of NY media attention given to the case of the gruesome stabbing murder of 37 year-old Marcelo Lucero on a November night back in 2008.
Today's New York Times reports that a jury of seven men and five woman, ten of whom were white, decided the killing wasn't murder, but instead convicted Long Island teenager Jeffrey Conroy of manslaughter and hate crimes for the stabbing death of Marcelo Lucero in 2008.
Lucero was brutally killed near a Long Island Railroad parking lot when Conroy and five other boys out on the town for a night of "Beaner-Hopping" (LI teen lingo for finding and beating Hispanic people they believe to be immigrants) surrounded, attacked and eventually stabbed the Ecuadorian dry cleaning store employee for being Hispanic.
The conviction goes a long way in addressing the years of unsolved violence against Hispanic immigrants in some Long Island communities - and puts the spotlight on a Suffolk County Police department under investigation by the Justice Department for discrimination in policing.
Long Island resident's concerns about large numbers of undocumented Hispanic immigrants moving into their communities warranted? Sure, but they can't excuse violent physical attacks on innocent people. What's happening to civility in this country?
