| |
|
New Attack Brings Hate Crime Charge
By Marvin Anderson
Two men face felony hate crime charges after they allegedly assaulted a transgender female in St. Albans.
The victim, Carmella Etienne, told police the two assailants chased her down last week near the intersection of 199th Street and 116th Avenue while throwing rocks and bottles, yelling slurs and threatening to kill her.
The incident comes a month after Leslie Mora, another transgender female, was beaten by men while she walked home in Jackson Heights. And also as the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund prosecutes a case for Lateisha Green, a transgender woman murdered in Syracuse.
Etienne told police her two alleged attackers, Nathanial Mims, 25, from the Bronx and Rasheed Thomas, 22, of Queens, yelled “don’t ever walk that block anymore or we will slash your throat.”
When she told her attackers that she would call the police, the defendants said “the police don’t care about you, they wont do anything to us,” according to Queens DA Richard Brown.
Mims and Thomas, police said, then continued the harassment and threw empty beer bottles at Etienne, one of which struck her leg causing a three-inch laceration.
“I didn’t know you could get locked up for calling somebody names,” according to police Thomas said during questioning. “I called her a bunch of names. I called her a faggot, but she didn’t see me throw anything.”
Sassafras Lowery, program coordinator at the Queens Pride House, said the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community center she works for is galvanizing the community to stand in support for victims such as Mora and Etienne.
The actions and harassment are regular issues for LGBT residents, Lowery said, especially transgender individuals. But cases like this are pivotal moments, she said, that will address civil rights issues of all people.
“In this case we applaud the action of law enforcement and district attorney to moving so swiftly to apprehending the suspects,” she said. “But this is disturbing because you find a lot of misunderstanding and fear in our community on who transgender people are, and a lot of that fear is changed into violence.”
The assailants were arraigned on Friday and both are being held for a $5,000 bail until their court case on July 23.
But the assailants in Mora’s case were given felony assault charges and not hate crime charges, unlike Etienne’s attackers.
“When the victim called the police, what was stated to police and what was said by the defendant is what led to the charges,” said DA spokeswoman Meris Campbell, explaining why Etienne’s attackers were given hate crime charges.
Campbell said the Mora case is still under investigation and may possibly result in additional charges.
Mora was attacked by two men who called her “faggot” in Spanish and left her half-naked, bloody and with numerous injuries including a laceration on her head that required stitches.
In the cases involving Mora, Etienne and Green, all the attackers were younger than 30.
It’s a sign that a new generation is bred on hate against individuals, said Michael Silverman, the executive director of the TLDEF.
Silverman, who worked with Mora and plans to aid Etienne if necessary, attended a memorial in Syracuse for Green and helped prosecute murder case that opened on Monday against her 20-year-old attacker.
“This shows that we still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “Even in young generations they still harbor biases.”
|
|
|