CUENCA, Ecuador — An Ecuadorean immigrant beaten to death in New York City in an apparent hate crime was carried to his grave Saturday following the third high-profile killing of a Latino immigrant in the U.S. this year.
Julia Quintuna, the mother of Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhanay, sobbed as she embraced her 10-year-old grandson Brian, one of Sucuzhanay’s children.
“My heart is broken, and so is that of all my family,” his brother German said at a funeral Mass. The coffin was scattered with roses and covered with the Ecuadorean flag.
Clutching candles, friends and family lined a roadway late Friday as the coffin wound its way from the airport to a funeral home. “Welcome . . . no one will hurt you here,” read a placard that friends carried on the walk.
Sucuzhanay, a 31-year-old real estate broker, was attacked Dec. 7 by men who kicked and beat him with an aluminum baseball bat, shouting anti-Latino and anti-gay slurs as he walked arm in arm with his brother near his Brooklyn home. New York City police officers are still searching for three suspects, and the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident. The Associated Press
