Stories
Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay
The two brothers from Ecuador had attended a church party and had stopped at a bar afterwards. While walking home arm-in-arm, a car pulled up and three men came out of the car shouting anti-gay and anti-Latino epithets at the brothers. Witnesses reported hearing vulgarisms against Hispanics and gay men. One man approached Jose Sucuzhanay, 31, the owner of a real estate agency who had been in New York a decade, and broke a beer bottle over the back of his head. Romel Sucuzhanay, 38, who was visiting from Ecuador on a two-month visa, bounded over a parked car and ran as the man with the broken bottle came at him. A distance away, he looked back and saw a second assailant beating his prone brother with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him repeatedly on the head and body. The man with the broken bottle turned back and joined the beating and kicking. At least five calls were made to 911. As police sirens wailed in the distance, the assailants, described only as black men by the police, sped away. Jose Sucuzhanay was transported to a local hospital where he was put on life support systems and remained in a coma after an operation for skull fractures and extensive brain damage. At a news conference, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said: "We believe all of this happened simply because of who these individuals are and who these perpetrators perceived them to be. For some reason (they) didn't like the two men they believed were gay ... and felt so emboldened in their hatred that they acted it out in violence." Jose Sucuzhanay was later declared brain-dead and died from his injuries.