By Jeremy Walsh
Two Bronx men have been indicted on hate crime charges in connection with a brutal attack on a pair of Ecuadorian men in Bushwick, Brooklyn, that left one of them dead and alarmed Ecuadorians throughout Queens and Long Island.
Hakim Scott, 25, and Keith Phoenix, 28, were both arrested and charged with murder as a hate crime last week in connection with the assault that killed Jose Sucuzhanay, police and prosecutors said. Both were held without bail.
Scott was set to return to court near press time Tuesday. Phoenix’s next court date was scheduled for Thursday. If convicted, both defendants face a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
“Any kind of hate crime whatsoever, whether it’s based on race or ethnicity or orientation, this is not what New York is all about,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference at police headquarters last week. “New York is about people living together, working together and respecting each other. And we are not going to throw away — because a couple of mindless people like these two who committed this crime — everything that we have built and everything that makes us a place where people around the world want to come and live.”
Sucuzhanay, a Bushwick resident and real estate broker who co−owned at least one building in Ridgewood, was walking arm−in−arm back from a bar with his brother, Romel, early in the morning on Dec. 7, 2008, when an SUV allegedly pulled up and the defendants got out, according to the indictment filed by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Mistaking the brothers for homosexuals, Scott and Phoenix allegedly called them by anti−gay and racial epithets, a criminal complaint filed by the DA said. Scott then allegedly bashed Jose Sucuzhanay in the head with a bottle while Phoenix allegedly beat the man with a bat, the complaint said.
Jose Sucuzhanay suffered a fractured skull and severe brain injuries, the complaint said. He was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he remained in a coma until he died Dec. 12, just a day before his mother arrived from Ecuador to make the decision to take him off life support.
Police searched in Manhattan, Westchester and Connecticut for the defendants before receiving a tip about an apartment in Yonkers, the New York Post reported.
Scott allegedly confessed to cops after he was arrested Feb. 25, the Post reported, quoting NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly as saying Scott felt bad about the attack, but Phoenix allegedly was remorseless.
The murder, along with the beating death of another Ecuadorian man in November 2008 on Long Island, prompted diplomats from the Ecuadorian Consulate to meet with Gov. David Paterson after Sucuzhanay’s funeral to discuss how to prevent further attacks.
Word of the arrests came as a relief to immigrant activists at the Jackson Heights−based nonprofit Make the Road New York, who held demonstrations calling on the police to investigate the murder as a hate crime.
“We also feel encouraged by all the affirmations by the district attorney and Mayor Bloomberg and all the leaders about the fact that homophobia is not going to be tolerated and that anti−immigrant violence is not going to be tolerated,” said Executive Director Ana Maria Archila. “It sets a very different tone from what we have heard in Long Island.”
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e−mail at jwalsh@timesledger.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 154.
