Hate Crime Victim Commits Suicide

We have some sad news to report.

Last April, the Houston Chronicle (here) reported that

In a case that drew national attention, [David] Ritcheson, a Mexican-American, was severely assaulted [in April 2006] by two youths while partying in Spring. One of the attackers, a skinhead . . . , Tuck, yelled ethnic slurs and kicked a pipe up his rectum, severely damaging his internal organs and leaving Ritcheson in the hospital for three months and eight days — almost all of it in critical care.

Ritcheson later testified before the U.S. Congress on the need for tougher hate crime laws. 

On Sunday, Ritcheson (here) leaped to his death from a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico.

AP reports that Ritcheson

hated being known as “that kid” — the teenager who was beaten unconscious and sodomized with a plastic pole during a party where one of his assailants shouted “White Power!” Ritcheson didn’t want to stand out from his [high school] classmates because of the assault, but he acknowledged in an interview that “it was just really hard to hold your head up, even to walk outside with everyone almost in the world knowing what happened.”

Rest in Peace, David.

KJ