Seven Long Island teenagers went on a hateful hunting trip they called “beaner jumping” late Saturday night when they beat and fatally stabbed a hard-working Ecuadorian man, a Long Island prosecutor said today.
Prosecutors say that Marcello Lucero, a 37-year-old dry cleaner employee, and a pal were walking to the home of another friend Saturday just before midnight on Railroad Avenue near the Patchogue LIRR station when an SUV stopped near them and the teens piled out yelling anti-Hispanic racial epithets.
As his friend ran, Lucero pulled his leather belt from his waist to try and defend himself from the thugs.
One of the youths, Kevin Shea, 17, then jumped forward and punched Lucero, knocking him to the ground, police said. When Lucero scrambled to his feet, Kevin Conroy, 17, a lacrosse and wrestling star at Medford-Patchogue High School, stabbed Lucero in the chest, prosecutors said.
As his attackers piled back into the SUV and fled, Lucero staggered a couple hundred feet before collapsing. A while later, his friend and Elder Fernandez, the man Lucero and he had been going to visit, returned to the scene hoping to rescue Lucero from the mob. They found him bleeding to death and Lucero was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Lucero’s friend provided police with a description of the SUV and the cops stopped the vehicle a short time later and arrested all the teens.
At their arraignment in Central Islip today, Suffolk County prosecutor Nancy Clifford said the boys set out to “find some Mexicans to f—- up.” She said they referred to this practice as “beaner jumping.” The youths all had high bail set and remained in custody.
Police sources say the group is suspected in at least one other bias attack but because the victim was too scared no charges were filed.
Lucero came to the US 16 years ago “looking for a better life,” his brother Joselo Lucero said.
“He was a really nice guy,” the brother said. “I feel empty right now.”
Conroy and Shea, both 17, along with Chris Overton, 16, and four other teens from Patchogue and Medford pleaded not guilty to charges of gang assault as a hate crime.
Conroy, who cops say stabbed Lucero, also pleaded not guilty to manslaughter as a hate crime.
Among the group, Overton is the only one with a significant criminal record, charged in a home invasion that ended with a Patchogue man named Carlton Shaw being murdered by one of Overton’s accomplices. A neighbor later found Shaw, lying in his backyard with his 3-year-old son sleeping on his dead father’s chest.