Four teens charged with beating of black FIU student

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Four teens charged with beating of black FIU student
According to Miami-Dade police, four teenagers beat a college student with a bat and tried drowning him at Haulover Beach Park Marina on Sunday.
Posted on Tue, Sep. 25, 2007

BY DAVID OVALLE
[e-mail]


MIAMI-DADE CORRECTIONS
Miguel Aranda, 18, has been charged
with a hate crime, battery and
attempted felony murder.


MIAMI-DADE CORRECTIONS

Jose Osorio, 21, has been charged
with aggravated battery and
attempted felony murder but not
a hate crime.

Four teenagers have been charged with a hate crime, accused of the beating and attempted drowning of a black college student at Haulover Beach Park Marina over the weekend.

After calling him the N-word, the teens beat Florida International University freshman Stephen Barrett with a baseball bat and tried to drown him in the Intracoastal Waterway, Miami-Dade police said.

The suspects in the attack range in age from 15 to 18.

All had attended a keg party at an island in the middle of the Intracoastal. About 1 a.m. Sunday, Barrett and two other FIU dorm mates were on a boat headed back to Haulover Marina when the driver of the boat said it was overloaded.

''Get off the boat, N-----,'' the teens said to Barrett, according to police reports.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/249239.html

[flashl]

1. Heavens, when will it end? n/t

[MADem]

2. Hmm. That's odd. Those bozos look like they're mixed race to my eye.

If they're of Carribean ancestry, they'll not have to go back too many branches on the family tree to find out that they were hurling an insult that Gramps or Granny might take issue with.

Idiots.

Aranda and Osorio were still jailed Monday.

Alleged hate crimes often make headlines in South Florida. Race usually is the reason attributed, followed by sexual orientation and religion.

Florida's hate-crime laws were enacted in 1989 after a rash of vandalism at Jewish synagogues. A person charged with a hate crime faces a more severe penalty.

Barrett, Eden and Cabevas are dorm buddies at FIU's University Park campus. Eden is white; Cabevas is Hispanic.

While Eden's and Cabevas' injuries were limited to bruises, Barrett's were more serious. He was taken to Aventura Hospital suffering from a stiff neck and dizziness, according to Eden.

Barrett came from New York to attend college at FIU. Reached Monday night, he declined to be interviewed about the incident.

''Welcome to Miami,'' said his friend, Eden.

[NOLALady]

5. Too bad.

"they were hurling an insult that Gramps or Granny might take issue with." Sad that not ALL Gramps and Grannies would not be disturbed by this action. Maybe that's why we are in the situation we're in today.
:banghead:

[MADem]

6. You know what they say--all politics is local.

And you can't get more local than family. That was my only point.

I'd guess there are a few gramps and grannies that aren't happy with these nitwits, and would be horrified to be related to the little shits. They were apparently 'raised wrong' or they're just plain assholes. Hard to tell without knowing them. Hope they enjoy their stay in jail, and I hope it's a good long one, too.

[RebelOne]

38. They look Cuban to me.

[NorthernSpy]

56. the majority of Cubans are of mixed race (European/African)...

Please see my post below explaining all this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3005249&mesg_id=3007444

[MADem]

57. Could be. nt

[rubberducky]

3. I feel like I`m going backwards in time.

What in the holy hell is happening? How in the hell can this shit be happening all over again? But, then I find the prosecuting of the Jenna 6 totally unbelievable in this what I thought was our enlightened day and age. My son is attending school in the south and he is learning an entire different set of values. I can see from what he tells me that he thinks that my color-blindness is wrong. It hurts my heart to see him learning prejudice. We are all just people. How could anyone think otherwise?

[Mike Daniels]

7. So the Jena 6 shouldn't be prosecuted at all?

I understand that the initial charges were over the top with "attempted murder". However, they cold-cocked a kid and proceeded to assault him even after he was unconscious. Any comparison to a school-yard fight was out the window once the victim hit the ground.

The fact that the DA failed to charge the white kids who put up the nooses or started a fight at a house party is separate from whether or not the 6 should face some charge for what was a effectively a beat down.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

8. WHAT WHITE KIDS?????????????????????????

I DON'T SEE ANY WHITE KIDS IN THIS.

[uppityperson]

18. Jena , they are talking about Jena

[LisaL]

50. According to the article, the three students that were beat up

were black, hispanic and white.
From reading the article, it seems that the charges only apply to the beating of black student. What about the other two?

[Judi Lynn]

51. According to all the articles, they used racial slurs against the black student, whom they beat

in the head with a bat, and were found, by the police, in the process of attempting to DROWN, after they softened him up very thoroughly with the bat, and he couldn't defend himself.

As one tv station reported,

Barnett was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center in critical condition.

http://www.local10.com/news/14199127/detail.html

That was the attack on the BLACK student whom was called the "N" word by the local Miami gentlemen who attacked him.

[NorthernSpy]

55. the attack was focused on him, and culminated in an attempt to drown him.

Barrett's friends were hit when they attempted to intervene.

[NOLALady]

10. According to the only credible eyewitness one person

hit the Barker kid. Why should "they" be charged if he was hit by one person?



"There was at least one credible witness that says the victim was knocked out by a single blow from behind and that Mychal was NOT the person who threw the punch. There is a possibility that this kid didn't even do it.

Coach Benjy Lewis gave two statements immediately after the school incident in which he clearly states that Justin Barker was facing him when Malcolm Shaw (not Mychal Bell) struck Barker from behind. “I saw Malcolm Shaw hit Justin Barker with his right fist to the right side of Justin’s head, right around the temple,” Lewis wrote. “Justin went down face first, knocked out . . .” Most witnesses agree that a single punch knocked Barker out cold. The only adult who witnessed the punch says Mychal Bell didn’t throw it."
"* At trial, special education teacher Kristy Martin listed off the names of the boys who surrounded Justin Barker as if they were clear in her memory. Although she was forced to admit that she never saw a single student touch Justin Barker, Martin’s ability to name names seemed very convincing. Martin is the only witness thus far who has provided a list of attackers longer than three names.
* In a written statement, given immediately after the incident, Coach Wayne Spence states that he was taking names of rowdy students in the gym during the lunch hour. “I had a list that Ms. Martin obtained from me,” he wrote. This suggests that Kristy Martin specifically asked Spence for the list of names the day of the fight. This explains why she is the only witness to remember more than two or three members of the Jena 6. Most eye witnesses can’t identify a single assailant by name. Most of the students who gave eyewitness statements after the December 4 altercation at the school make references to “a bunch of black kids”.
* The fact that Justin Barker cannot remember who hit him argues in favor of Coach Lewis’s blow-from-behind account. It must also be remembered that Lewis was the only adult who directly witnessed the assault. He was also the only non-partisan eye witness. If Lewis is telling the truth, the witnesses who identify Mychal Bell as the initial attacker are either confused or, like Jessica Hooter, they are victims of a false sense of concreteness produced by the continual retelling the story in the company of partisan friends."



I'm still waiting for the same DA to bring charges on the kids who beat the Bailey kid. Or maybe he might get around to
pressing charges against the man who pulled the gun on the teens.

Jena6 is about an abuse of power.

[Judi Lynn]

20. Thanks for shining a little light on this. Funny that more people don't keep going until they

actually know the facts!

I suspect it's far more important to discharge a certain kind of hostility A.S.A.P. rather than to open to a larger, more complex reality. That requires work.

[ProudDad]

29. You're being entirely disengenious

the poster didn't say shit about not doing something about a fight...

The poster said that the way that fucked up Jena DA did it was a travesty...

I say that the way the fucked up Jena DA did it is business as usual in racist Amerika... Standard Operating Procedure for the racist criminal-injustice system...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

33. the word is disingenuous. Thank you, the Grammar Police.

[ProudDad]

39. Should have used spell czeck...in a hoory...

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

34. It was astonishing to learn what unbelievable power he gave himself to terrorize

people. A decent man or woman would have handled that job with a bit of professionalism. He became a nasty little unchecked tyrant. I hope someone up the line will clip his demon wings.

[rayofreason]

9. Eliminating pathology...

...takes time and persistence.

Look how long it took to get rid of smallpox. This kind of prejudice is much harder to isolate and treat, and each of us is an antibiotic and vaccine.

[ProudDad]

31. And a carrier

until we ALL face up to the fact that the entire society is tainted by racism, the progeny of slavery, it will never end...

[monktonman]

4. With faces only a mother could love n/t

[mitchum]

11. What do ya expect from southern rednec---ooops!

[sadiesworld]

12. lol

The collective DU disappointment is almost audible.

[NOLALady]

13. Scary!

[mitchum]

14. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that there are only 12...

(now 13) responses on this thread. Nothing at all...

[guruoo]

15. k&r

[Judi Lynn]

16. Anyone recall the goddawful police brutality against the black community in Miami?

Miami hasn't had great race relations, for decades. Some people certainly recall the riot with many killed, after Miami police beat a black insurance man to death.

Miami Herald readers read the following information in that paper concerning two friends, one black and one white who came to Miami from Cuba:

That last point, the existence of a racial chasm within the Cuban community, was brought home this week by a lengthy article on race relations in Miami by New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito (Best of Friends, Worlds Apart). It detailed how two best friends, one black, one white, both of whom reached the United States from Cuba by raft in 1994, have drifted apart as a result of the racial climate into which they have been thrust in Miami. While the personal friendship of Achmed Valdés and Joel Ruiz so far has endured the strains, they see each other rarely and have widely different views on race and politics. One wonders whether the friendship will survive as they continue to live separate, disconnected lives.

A LIFE OF LIMITS

For, while Cuba has never been and is not now a paradise of racial equality, when Valdés and Ruiz lived there, people more or less got along together, and the pair experienced a close friendship and connected lives. Here, Valdés, the white Cuban, feels at home and happy living in what for him is a kind of new, improved Cuba. Ruiz, the black Cuban, believes he has been the object of racial prejudice by white Cubans and the police. He lives a life of limits, even avoiding Cuban restaurants. ``In Cuba, I walked as if I owned the streets,'' he told The New York Times. ``Here I have to figure out where, what, when, everything.''

What happened in Miami? Put simply, Valdés became another (white) Miami Cuban, a relatively privileged identity here. Ruiz became another young black man, and he faces the slings and arrows characteristic of that condition in this country and this city. Having met less than a warm embrace from white Cubans, Ruiz has gravitated toward African Americans, but there, he sometimes faces rejection because he is Cuban.

There are lessons in this sad story for every racial and ethnic group in this city:

The fight against bigotry should begin at home. If there is a heightened sensitivity to issues of prejudice in light of recent events, let's use it to face the issue squarely, beginning by putting our own house in order.
(snip/...)

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/jun00/08e14.htm

[Pawel K]

17. These assholes look really tough

that look will go away after a few years in prison. Hope they rot.

[ProudDad]

32. Nope, they'll just get tougher

and rougher and meaner and will learn more of the "criminal arts" and come back out and come to your house and f*ck you up.

That's the way the criminal-injustice system works. The DA's and Cops lie if they must but they do anything to keep up their arrest numbers (quotas) and get their convictions -- with as much jail/prison time as they can...

The prisons are run by the inmates and that's JUST the way the "authorities" want it -- less work for them...

So these kids will fit right into that corrupt system and the odds are very good that they'll come out badder and more skillful than they went in.


As long as this stupid society keeps trying the same old bullshit they'll keep getting the same result...

If you want to learn what we should be doing, you could start with this book;

Laura Magnani and Harmon L. Wray.
Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System
Paperback: 187pp. Fortress Press 2006.

http://www.afscstore.org/store/product_info.php?products_id=5195

http://list.afsc.org/pipermail/new-resources/2006-June/000011.html

[uppityperson]

19. Why were minors at a kegger? Not excusing the attack, just another question.

[Judi Lynn]

21. Four Teens Charged In Hate Crime Attack

Sep 25, 2007 1:33 pm US/Eastern

Four Teens Charged In Hate Crime Attack

Peter D'Oench
Reporting

(CBS4) BAL HARBOUR A keg party got out of hand and four South Florida teens are accused of attacking and trying to drown an African-American college student at Haulover Park marina.

Police report said both the victim and his attackers had spent Saturday evening at a party on an island in the Intracoastal Waterway. Around 1 a.m. Sunday, 18-year old Stephen Barrett and two of his dorm-mates from Florida International University went to hop a boat to leave the island when they got into a verbal scuffle with those on the boat who said there was not enough room for all three.

“Racial slurs telling him to get off the boat, and they only ordered the black male to get off,” said Alvaro Zabaleta a Miami-Dade policeman. “And he was the one that was being beaten with the bat over the head by these individuals.”

After a few minutes of arguing, Barrett and his dorm-mates decided to wait on the island for another boat to take them back to the Haulover Park marina.

Barrett’s friends told investigators when they finally got back to the marina, several teens armed with baseball bats were waiting for them.
(snip/...)

http://cbs4.com/local/local_story_268105705.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 Charged With Hate Crime In Student's Beating
Teens Accused Of Nearly Drowning, Beating Black Student With Bat

POSTED: 10:22 am EDT September 25, 2007

~snip~
According to the arrest report, police officers responded to reports of a fight at Haulover Beach Park Marina at about 2 a.m. Sunday. When officers arrived, a witness told police that he saw Barrett in the ocean, struggling with one of the accused and having his head held underwater in an attempt to drown him.

Barrett, a student at Florida International University, told police he was on a boat with his roommates when the teens told him to "get out of the boat, n-----," according to the arrest report. Barrett got out of the boat, at which time the teens and the man beat him and his roommates with a baseball bat, the report said.

Barrett was hit in the back of the head numerous times. He was taken to Aventura Hospital with severe head trauma.

A witness called police, and Osorio and the teens were taken into custody. The baseball bat used in the attack was taken as evidence.
(snip/)

http://www.local10.com/news/14199127/detail.html

[tnlefty]

22. Severe head trauma, I hope that he's gonna be okay.

This just makes me sick.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Same here. He would NOT have been on the road to recovery if the cops hadn't come

at the moment they did. Any longer and he probably would have been drowned. Being beaten on his head with a bat probably made him a little less capable of surviving in the water during the continuing attack.

[Wcross]

36. I hear ya.

Being hit several times in the head with a baseball bat is likely to cause severe and lasting injuries if not kill someone.

[BreweryYardRat]

24. Preppy assholes. These dickweeds make me sick.

[ProudDad]

41. Did you read the article?

the "preppy assholes" were the victims...

Some wanna' be right-wing cuban gangsters were the perps...

[hedgehog]

25. I think that more and more people are accultured to resort to violence

to defend themselves when physically threatened or when their "honor" is threatened. This is the third post I've seen today describing this behavior. The other two were talking about the incidents at Jena and about a mother who got aboard a school bus to smack around a kid who'd been bullying her son. We had a wonderful case in which members of a fraternity at Buffalo State drove 3 hours to attack members of a fraternity at Oswego College who had dissed them. Unfortunately, they pulled up at 4AM at the wrong address. They were climbing in the windows, breaking down the door and screaming threats when one of them was shot by the guy who lived there.

I'm sure that school bus drivers could add dozens of accounts about how words escalate into fights over the course of several days.

I suspect that in most cases the people involved are of different races/ethnic groups, but I wonder if racism is the cause or whether race/ethnicity is merely a handy way to decide who's on which team?


How much of this comes from the Republican meme that there isn't enough to go around, so fight to get yours and to hell with the other guy?

[Acadia Blue]

26. They are Cubans. Though part black, consider themselves all white.

[SayWhatYo]

27. Really??

[RebelOne]

40. No, not all Cubans are part black. In fact, very few. n/t

[ProudDad]

42. You've obviously NOT been to Cuba

Since the rich Cubans were the ones who bailed to Miami, and they're VERY Racist against blacks, you may be right about Miami...

But in Cuba due to the Spaniards importation of many slaves, very little residual racism, lots of intermarriage -- they are the beautiful people...

[NorthernSpy]

52. Cuba's population is 60-70% "Mulatto" (their term, and their estimate)...

Thing is, over there, being mulatto (that is, of partial African origin) doesn't exclude you from social recognition as "white". Well, it sure as hell does here in the United States.

In Cuba, "black" means being more or less pure African. Over here, "black" means having any discoverable African ancestry whatsoever. In Cuba, you can be white if you have a blood tie to European. In America, you can't be white if you have a blood tie to the much reviled "Dark Continent".


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A29550-2000Oct27

[Chovexani]

28. Sociopaths

:puke:

[BlueIris]

49. Yep. Horrifying, aren't they?

[Drum]

30. A propos of nothing, but

do these guys look like they take a lot of pains eith the eyebrow grooming? Weird. :shrug:

[Mudoria]

35. Events like these go in both directions...

http://www.wavy.com/global/story.asp?s=7117439

[ProudDad]

43. And your point??? (n/t)

[CRF450]

46. The point is that no one should be beaten like that, white or black, it doesn't fucking matter!

[Judi Lynn]

48. The poster's incident he contributed to my thread concerning a hate crime

has been viewed as a NON-HATE CRIME, and they didn't nearly kill the victim.

http://www.wtkr.com/Global/story.asp?S=7121935&nav=ZolHbyvj

Are you here to help us grasp the meaning of Mudoria's contribution?

I think we can manage.

[Judi Lynn]

44. Get more details for your story and post your own thread. Simple, isn't it?

You don't need to contradict this story, nor qualify it.

Do your own thread.

[NorthernSpy]

54. bbbut that would mean letting a story with a black victim stand on its own!

:eyes:


Oh, and here's all the proof we need that they didn't actually bother to read the story: the piece mentioned that the thugs attacked Barrett's white friends as well when they tried to defend him. Now, if the low-count no-accounts were aware of that, hoo-boy! Big ole Latino-on-white crime rant, right there!

[0007]

53. What has that to do with this thread? Or are you trying to hi-jack

the Original Post?

[Felix Mala]

37. Prosecutor promises harshest possible punishment for anyone who isn't black...

They get their bats taken away for a week.

[Judi Lynn]

45. You aren't making complete sense. Could you clarify your comments? n/t

[Felix Mala]

58. Uh, blacks receive harsher penalties...

[Judi Lynn]

47. Police: Student's beating a hate crime

Police: Student's beating a hate crime


Published: 25, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:BAL HARBOUR, Fla., 25 (UPI) -- Four Florida teenagers have been accused of a hate crime for allegedly beating a black college student and trying to drown him.

Miami-Dade police said the group used racial slurs during the weekend attack and hit Stephen Barrett with a baseball bat before dumping him in the Intracoastal Waterway, The Miami Herald reported.

Barrett, a freshman at Florida International University, and other students had been attending a keg party on an island in the waterway. Police said that the trouble began with an overloaded boat heading back to Haulover Beach State Marina.

The teens allegedly ordered Barrett to get off the boat, using a racial slur. He and two friends did so and took the next boat to the marina, where they were ambushed, police said.
(snip/...)

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/09/25/police_students_beating_a_hate_crime/6323/