Friday, March 29, 2024

New York Teenager Testifies About Attacking Latinos for Sport

Nicholas Hausch, 18, of New York testified on Monday in New York State Supreme Court about attacking Latinos for sport which he called “beaner hopping”.

On a Friday night in November 2008, Hausch said that he and two friends drove to Patchogue, New York and used a pistol-style BB gun to shoot at a Hispanic man on his porch. The next night Hausch was again in Patchogue with friends when they spotted a Hispanic man rolling his bicycle. Hausch proceeded to call the man a “beaner” and “Mexican” and punched and kicked him taking the man’s white baseball cap as a trophy.

Later that evening, the defendant and six other young men saw two Hispanic men walking in a parking lot of the train station.  Hausch said, “We were calling them names like ‘beaner,’ ‘Mexican’ ”. The men apparently started screaming back.

One of the Hispanic men took off his jacket and began swinging his belt after one of the teenagers punched him in the face, and the man started swinging the belt.

After walking away, Hausch testified, one of the other teenagers, Jeffrey Conroy told him that he had stabbed a 37-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant named Marcelo Lucero, who later died. Hausch’s testimony in Conroy’s trial was one of the first times that any of the seven young men charged in the attack had spoken publicly in detail about the episode.

Conroy, who is now 19, is accused of second-degree murder as a hate crime, gang assault and other charges. He could face up to life in prison.

New York Times