Sent by: Ramon Cardona
FROM:
WE TALK HERE OFTEN about the climate of hostility, hate, and aggression against Latin@s. Consider this another unfortunate marker in our collection.
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio – A central Ohio teenager accused of putting a noose around a Hispanic boy’s neck and dragging him in a parking lot has been sentenced to 10 days in jail.
The 18-year-old was sentenced Wednesday in juvenile court in Mount Vernon, a city of 15,000 residents an hour’s drive northeast of Columbus. He dropped his original plea of not guilty and pleaded no contest to ethnic intimidation.
A charge of aggravated menacing was dropped.
Of course. I mean, the 18-year old is probably a very good football player or something. Maybe he was the Prom King, I don’t know. I’m sure the court had a good reason for takin’ it easy on the lad.
UPDATE: Thanks to amigo (and a fellow founding editor of The Sanctuary) @ManEegee, my understanding of this crime/event has been broadened. The article I read and linked above played down the assault quite a lot. Let’s use a new link here:
MOUNT VERNON — An 18-year-old Fredericktown man will pay a visit today to the juvenile division of Knox County Court of Common Pleas to plead to charges of aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation in connection with an incident in which he is accused of trying to drag a teenager with a noose last May.
A hearing is scheduled at 9 a.m. before Judge James M. Ronk.
The man allegedly shouted racial slurs at 17-year-old Robert Cantu and his friends during an early morning confrontation May 30, 2008. The confrontation occurred in a parking lot at the corner of Main Street and Ohio Avenue in downtown Mount Vernon.
” ‘Get the Mexican,’ ” Cantu told police his assailant shouted at him, in a statement four days after the incident. “So they grabbed me and held me down and put the nosse (sic) on me.”
They tried to drive away and drag Knox with them, but three friends helped him escape the noose before they took off with his neck and head and body in tow. Maybe that’s the kind of fellowship that earned Mount Vernon, Ohio the title of the state’s Most Livable Community in 1994.
The most serious of the charges — ethnic intimidation — is a fifth-degree felony, which carries a possible jail sentence of one year. However, because prosecutors declined to try him as an adult, the harshest penalty the defendant could serve is six months in a juvenile deten-tion center.
“The ethnic intimidation statue is Ohio’s equivalent of a hate crime,” said Charles McConville, the assistant prosecutor in Knox County who is trying the case. But “no attempt was made,” McConville said, to try the accused as an adult, though,it was ultimately the presiding judge’s decision.
Climate of hate and dehumanization. Inevitable end result, one more time. But hey, I know I’m getting a little overexcited about these kinds of things! Clearly some people find my outrage a bore. After all, wasn’t this just a friendly lil game of Get the Mexican? I hear it’s quite popular nowadays, dontchaknow.
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