Police: Hate-crime charges in assault on Nassau BOCES bus
Nassau teens face hate-crime charges after a 14-year-old's daily school bus ride escalated from a commute filled with anti-gay taunts to a ride of terror, with the teens assaulting him two days in a row and calling him an anti-gay slur, Nassau police said Thursday.
The name-calling during the attacks this week as well as the teens' "ongoing course of conduct" over several weeks or months prompted officers to charge the teens with hate crimes, police said in a news conference.
David Spencer, 18, of Barry Drive North in Valley Stream; and Chase Morrison, 16, of Barbara Lane in Lakeview, were arrested and scheduled to be arraigned in First District Court in Hempstead.
Spencer and Morrison were each charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and second-degree aggravated harassment, a felony.
A third teen, Roy Wilson, 16, of Rose Boulevard in Baldwin was charged with third-degree assault, police said.
The bias crime distinction upgrades the charges one degree, making the defendants eligible for stiffer penalties.
"We felt this was bias-related," Det. Lt. John MacEwen, commander of the Second Squad detectives, said at the news conference with Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey at police headquarters in Mineola.
Police said on Tuesday at 2:15 p.m., the suspects "stomped and kicked" the victim on the arms, legs, stomach and thighs on a bus leaving the BOCES facility in Hicksville, and Spencer and Morrison taunted him about what they believed was his sexual orientation.
Then, on Wednesday at about 7:20 a.m., police said Spencer and Morrison slapped the victim on the head and in the face on a bus to the BOCES facility and again made remarks about sexual orientation.
The victim reported the incidents to school authorities Wednesday afternoon. Police arrested the suspects Wednesday night.
The victim, whose name police are withholding, suffered bruises and "substantial pain throughout his body."
Police said they were trying to determine whether the bus driver knew of the attacks or tried to stop or report them.
The alleged bias crimes come in the wake of two recent high-profile cases, one in New Jersey in which a Rutgers student killed himself after he was secretly filmed having sex with a man and the video was posted on the Internet, and in the Bronx, where police said 10 men were suspected in the torture of three others who they thought were gay.
Mulvey said the string of incidents are not necessarily evidence of an uptick in bias crimes.
"Unfortunately, this kind of hate and bias does exist in our society," he said, adding that there are about 100 bias incidents in Nassau each year and that this year's figures are similar to previous years' totals. "I don't think it's spiking right now."
Posted Friday, October 15, 2010
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