Four thugs nearly beat an Ecuadorian immigrant to death in Brooklyn after spotting him walking arm in arm with his brother and assuming they were gay, sources said yesterday.
Cops said they were investigating it as a hate crime, as José Osvaldo Sucuzhanay, 31, a father of two, clung to life last night at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens after undergoing brain surgery.
“He is a fighter,” said his brother José Sucuzhanay Jr., who was not with him during the attack. “We think he will recover.”
Sources said José Osvaldo and another brother, Ramel, were drunk and holding each other up as they staggered home from a party at 3:30 a.m. Saturday. A man jumped out of a burgundy SUV at Kossuth Place and Bushwick Avenue, yelled anti-gay slurs, and smashed a bottle over the victim’s head, the sources said.
Ramel ran off, but four assailants jumped on their prey, repeatedly belting him with a baseball bat while yelling anti-Hispanic slurs, the sources said.
Ramel ran back brandishing a cellphone and yelling that he’d called the cops, prompting the wolf pack to run off.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn ripped the attackers.
“”It won’t be tolerated in Bushwick; it won’t be tolerated in Brooklyn; it won’t be tolerated in any borough in our city,” she fumed.