Portrait Of A Town Where Attacking Latinos Was Sport

Portrait Of A Town Where Attacking Latinos Was Sport
FILE - In this April 19, 2010 file photo, Rosario Lucero, center, her son Joselo, left, and daughter Isabel, right, stand near the site where her son Marcelo Lucero was stabbed to death in Patchogue, N.Y., after 19 year-old suspect Jeffrey Conroy, was convicted of manslaughter as a hate crime but acquitted of murder. A new PBS documentary, "Not in Our Town," portrays efforts community leaders have made to put the 2008 killing behind them. But a recent letter from the U.S. Justice Department, which began a probe of police policy on New York?s eastern Long Island after the killing, indicates much still needs to be done. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)
FILE - In this April 19, 2010 file photo, Rosario Lucero, center, her son Joselo, left, and daughter Isabel, right, stand near the site where her son Marcelo Lucero was stabbed to death in Patchogue, N.Y., after 19 year-old suspect Jeffrey Conroy, was convicted of manslaughter as a hate crime but acquitted of murder. A new PBS documentary, "Not in Our Town," portrays efforts community leaders have made to put the 2008 killing behind them. But a recent letter from the U.S. Justice Department, which began a probe of police policy on New York?s eastern Long Island after the killing, indicates much still needs to be done. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

Five years ago this month Marcelo Lucero, an undocumented immigrant living in the Long Island, N.Y., village of Patchogue, was stabbed to death by seven teens who were out on one of their "beaner-hopping" jaunts. Attacking Latinos for sport was one of the teens' late-night diversions. Some of the last words Lucero heard before his death were slurs. "Fucking Mexican, fucking illegals," Jeffrey Conroy and six other teens--Jordan Dasch, Anthony Hartford, Nicholas Hausch, Christopher Overton, Jose Pacheco and Kevin Shea--shouted at Lucero and his best friend, Angel Loja. (It hardly mattered that they were in fact Ecuadorian.)

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