Pa. teens charged in fatal beating of immigrant

[RamboLiberal]

Source: AP News My Way

PORT CARBON, Pa. (AP) - Three white teens were charged Friday in what officials said was an epithet-filled fatal beating of an illegal Mexican immigrant in a small northeast Pennsylvania coal town. Brandon J. Piekarsky, 16, and Colin J. Walsh, 17, were charged as adults with homicide and ethnic intimidation in the July 12 attack on Luis Ramirez.

A third teen, Derrick M. Donchak, 18, was charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and other offenses. All are from Shenandoah, where the attack occurred.

Additional charges are expected in the case that has roiled Shenandoah, a small, economically depressed town where police have reported friction between whites and a growing Hispanic population.

The suspects played football at Shenandoah Valley High School; Donchak, now enrolled at Bloomsburg University, was the quarterback last season.


Read more: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080725/D9252RO00.html

---

As I suspected this town is not that far from Hazelton where the mayor has been railing against illegal immigrants. I think a lot of hatred has been stirred up in that area of PA.

[hedgehog]

1. So Piekarsky, Walsh and Donchak are against immigration?

Irony alert

[Chulanowa]

14. Egged on by Mayor Barletta, no less

Wonder if his own forebearers ever suffered this treatment, and how they would respond to his rhetoric.

[Iris]

2. and THIS is why I can't stand hearing the rhetoric of the Hazelton mayor and people like him.

[kenny blankenship]

3. The sadness of it deepens with the sad irony that the accused all have "immigrant" names themselve

In earlier times, they might have easily been on the receiving end of violence and "ethnic intimidation" themselves. Every Walsh I've ever known was Irish, Piekarsky is likely Polish and the ancestors of Derrick Donchak probably came from the region around what's now called the Czech Republic.

[RamboLiberal]

8. Too bad the history of immigration & the struggles they face

I live near Pittsburgh, am in my fifties. I heard from my grandparents and my parents of the struggles, the bias, etc that were faced by my German ancestors coming here in the 1880's-1890's for work in the brutal steel mills and railroads in this area, and then the Slovaks side of the family who came here in the early 1900's for the work in the mills. My Slovak grandparents never did learn to speak English that well. And from what I understand my German great-grandparents didn't either.

I saw the way the men were maimed by the railroads and mills. And some uncles I never got to meet because they were killed by their work. I also heard of the brutal 12 hour shifts and even one shift that was 24 hours! Gave me an appreciation of the mills.

My grandfather who's anscestors date back to the French & Indian Wars in this area and perhaps before (German) told me of working in the mines where the shafts were 3 feet in height. And of sleeping in a house where there were cracks in the wall and the snow blew on to their bed.

I also saw their prejudice against the blacks and the "diegos" as they called Italians.

On my own I read and continue to explore the history of this area and my own family.

Yeah these jerks should've learned what their anscestors faced when they came here. How they were exploited and spat upon.

A book I highly recommend is Out of this Furnace for a fictional account of work in the mills of Western PA.

Out of This Furnace is an historical novel and the best-known work of the American writer Thomas Bell (1903–1961).

The novel is set in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a steel town just south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania along the Monongahela River. It was first published in 1941 by Little, Brown and Company. Based upon Bell's own family of Rusyn and Slovak immigrants, the story follows four generations of a family, starting with their migration in 1880 from Austria-Hungary to the United States, and finishing with World War II. The novel's title refers to the central role of the steel mill in the family's life and in the history of the Pittsburgh region.

Long out of print, the novel was rediscovered in the 1970s by David P. Demarest, Jr., a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, who convinced director Frederick A. Hetzel at the University of Pittsburgh Press to reissue it in 1976. The book quickly became a regional bestseller. By the 1980s, however, it found an even larger readership on American college campuses. Out of This Furnace is regularly used as required reading in universities to introduce students to the history of immigration, industrialisation, and the rise of trade unionism, as well as to the genre of the American working class novel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_This_Furnace


History IMHO is not well taught in this country and we've lost much of the oral history of our own families and backgrounds in most cases.

[JerseygirlCT]

26. Along with learning about their own ancestors, though, they need

to learn to see that in the larger historical context, and they need to learn empathy.

Too often, you'll get the first part of the lesson, and it merely feeds the sense that they've been put upon, and so have the right to lash out at others. Instead, knowing your grandparents or greatgrandparents lived through discrimination should be the impetus for greater empathy for today's newcomers.

Why does it seem to work that way so rarely?

[AlphaCentauri]

21. Those immigrants are more accepted because they can "blend" and "assimilate"

they don't look different like latinos that's how barriers are impose in minorities.

[JerseygirlCT]

27. That's the case now, but it wasn't really then.

Society knew who the newcomers were, believe me. Irish, Italians, Polish, Slovak... they were easily identified by their communities and discriminated against then.

[Demit]

4. And I'm sure we'll hear the impassioned pleas not to ruin these fine young men's athletic careers

What a disgusting quote from one of their lawyers, who blamed the victim's death on a "street fight that ended tragically." Sure, three on one is a street fight, right.

[mbperrin]

18. In a "fight", don't all parties get hit?

This looks like a beating to me. But what do I know? My grandparents are German, German, Prussian, and French, and all came here AFTER 1900, si I'm sure I don't qualify as a "real" American, either.

[EFerrari]

33. It's not a "fight" if it's seven to one, is it?

[mwb970]

5. I'm so proud of my country! /nt

[TomInTib]

6. "Donchak" and "Pierkarsky". Not exactly names on the Mayflower manifest.

Maybe they are Native Americans.

I have two friends from Germany (American citizens) who rail incessantly about the problems caused by immigration.

[SidneyCarton]

7. This is what happens when you whip up anti-immigrant hysteria.

People cease to see immigrants as human, and its a rapid slide into barbarism from there.

[AlphaCentauri]

22. under the indifference of congress

[JerseygirlCT]

28. I agree. nt

[readmoreoften]

9. They should also be charged with being living, breathing stereotypes.

"The suspects played football at Shenandoah Valley High School; Donchak, now enrolled at Bloomsburg University, was the quarterback last season." Do they also rape their dates and beat up nerds with taped together glasses?

Watch the working class blame the poor for their problems. What an absurd and violent mental cloud we live under.

[BeHereNow]

10. What the hell is WRONG with people? This story turned my stomach.

What does it say about our society that something like this happens
to an innocent person visiting a public park.

It could've been you or me.

Lock them up and throw away the key.

BHN

[flashl]

11. There's an increase in hate crimes and groups as the immigration debate distraction continues. nt

[DiverDave]

12. The faux news immigration hysteria

and finger pointing has bore it's awful fruit.

By whipping up the bias against illegal emigrants, they (the right wing mouthpieces) are as much to blame as those knuckle draggers who carried out their 'orders'.

[TaffyMoon]

13. lou dobbs army

[bumblebee1]

15. Actually, this town isn't in the same county as Hazelton.

I grew up not too far from Port Carbon. There were alot of Irish, Polish and Lithuanians who lived in my town. Alot of them worked in the mines.

[Desperadoe]

17. Not Port Carbon

This happened in Shenandoah, which may as well be in another country from Port Carbon. Anyone familiar with that area knows that Shenandoah has a long and sordid history of ethnic violence. In the past it was usually confined to the various European ethnic groups that migrated to this region in the heyday of anthracite coal mining. I can only imagine what an immigration of Mexicans has been like but I bet it has been really ugly.

When I first started traveling this area, in my job during the early 80s, I was warned about this town and I would later find that the stories were all true. The people of the 'coal region' of PA are some of the nicest and most friendly people in the world but Shenandoah is just a strange and violent place.

[Sin]

31. Hey were ya from :)

I'm from Pottsville here, well just out side of Minersville. :)
It's been all over the news and been hearing bits and pieces about it from different people seeing that I work with a few people from Shenandoah. crazy stuff I'm surprised the other murders didn't make the news as well that happen on the same day in Scranton all you really see on the news around here is deadly accident, Deadly fire, or Murder. Quite depressing.

Don't usually go to that side of the mountain unless I'm just passing through.

[bumblebee1]

35. Sin,

Love the name. I was born in Pottsville. I did alot of my growing up in Cumbola until the age of 16. My aunt also lives in Pottsville; she also lives towards Minersville.

[lebkuchen]

16. This reminds me of Matthew Shepard and WY

The story discusses "racial tensions" in the PA area. Who is creating the tension? It sounds like it's the town's quarterback and his minions et al, though killing another human being is beyond "tension." It's psychopathic hatred.

Thanks for your insight as to who is perpetrating the hatred.

[Ian David]

19. Hate Crimes are Domestic Terrorism. n/t

[Parabol]

20. Facts the press is leaving out...

There are 3 sides to every story. Both sides and then the truth. All of you who are getting your information from news sources are only getting one side of the story. This was NOT a hate crime. This has NOTHING to do with race. This was infact a street fight ending in tragic whether you want to beleive it or not. The press and district attorney are making this something more than it really is. Not that this incident isn't important but this is not the "hate crim" is being turned into.
Yes what happened was wrong and should never have happened, but there is alot being left out by the press. It was one punch and one kick, not a beating. It started over a verbal argument that was escalated by Ramirez, he was not targeted for being Mexican. There was a handgun pulled on the 3 teens later recovered by police. Ramirez, here illegally, was wanted for murder, raping and impregnating his fiance`s 13 year old sister. The fiance` is raising the child as to hide the incident, and selling drugs, so he was no saint either. He was indeed working two jobs one of which was dealing drugs. He was raising 3 kids. One child isn't even his and one is from the 13 year old girl he repeatedly raped. Which by the way was brought to the district attorneys attention but he felt no need to do anything about. Now he wants justice for a man he should have put in jail to begin with.
They are also saying that the teens met at Pierkarsky's house to "get their stories straight". This is also FALSE. The teens along with their families were being terrorized by Mexicans, some of which from the "Latin Kings" gang and were at his house hiding from them because he is the only teen that the Mexicans didn't know where he lived.
I'm not trying to say that this was ok and that he deserved to die, or that the teens should go unpunished. I would just like everyone who feels the need to quickly judge and ridicule these teens and shenandoah about being racist from sources or are not even giving the full story to know the truth so that maybe they can then put more than just their "2 cents worth" in.

[tabasco]

23. Ok! I guess I'll take the word of an anonymous internet poster

over the police, witnesses and the prosecutor!

[hatrack]

24. Especially an anonymous poster with one post ever on DU

:eyes:

[EFerrari]

32. Wow. What a steaming pile.

Eyewitnesses disagree with you and I hope you manage to stay out of jail yourself.

[AlphaCentauri]

37. am I reading the real battle of the Alamo

[Critters2]

38. And you know all this how, exactly? nt

[JerseygirlCT]

25. It's always seemed to me to be such a sad, depressed and

depressing corner of PA. But kids don't do these things in a vacuum. As the song goes, you have to be carefully taught.

[WriteDown]

29. Sounds like there is more to this story...

This will be an interesting one to watch and see what unfolds.

http://www.timesleader.com/news/3_charged_in_fatal_attack_07-27-2008.html

[JI7]

30. has Lou Dobbs reported on this ?

[ohio2007]

34. Alcohol related ?

guarantee it

[Parabol]

36. What would I know...

Well you don't have to beleive me. I mean I only grew up in Shenandoah. I only know the suspects personally. I'm only personal friends of the all the police officers in town I wouldn't have the slightest clue about anything about this ordeal. But being that I never posted on here before, I must be making this all up. I supose because some of you post on here all the time and prob don't even live in Pennsylvania you would know all about this incident.
I only came accross this site by accident looking for articles about the incident because I heard it had reached national attention. I understand that people are going to talk but I figured if people feel the need to talk about this they should be talking about the whole story, not just the one side the press is telling. My mistake for thinking that people would want to be well informed before voicing thier opinion.
I would also like to know why is it that everytime a white person does something to another race its racism at its worst and the people are considers monsters. Its considered the worst thing to ever happen and the world is going to hell? But when its the other way around its just a case of wrong place at the wrong time and its just a shame?
How is it that minorities can be racist against whites its no big deal. "they're venting frustration". For example, a black person can call a white person "cracker" or "whitey" and its just slang. But God help us if a white person would use the "N" word. That person would be considered barbaric, a disgrace to society.

[AlphaCentauri]

39. Jennifer Passmore has been asking the same question

she is racist