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David Ritcheson – Rest in Peace

By Carmen D. on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007, 12:35 am Comments

On Sunday, David Ritcheson jumped to his death from the deck of a cruise ship. He killed himself after surviving one of the most brutal and repugnant hate crimes in recent memory:

Ritcheson’s death comes less than three months after he testified before Congress about how two teens nearly killed him on April 23, 2006, by repeatedly kicking a patio umbrella stand into his rectum while shouting “white power!” Spring Teen who Survived Pipe Attack Dies after Leap from Cruise Ship – Bill Murphy, Paige Hewitt and Jennifer Leahy, Houston Chronicle

And in David Ritcheson’s own words:

After I was surprisingly sucker punched and knocked out, I was dragged into the back yard for an attack that would last for over an hour. Two individuals, one an admitted racist skinhead, attempted to carve a swastika on my chest. Today I still bear that scar on my chest like a scarlet letter. After they stripped me naked, I was burned with cigarettes and savagely kicked by this skinhead’s steel toed army boots. After burning me in the center of the forehead, the skinhead attacker was heard saying that now I looked like an Indian with the red dot on my forehead. Moreover, the witnesses to the attack recalled the two attackers calling me a “wetback” and a ‘spic” as they continued to beat me as I lay unconscious. Once the attack came to an end, I was dragged to the rear of the back yard and left for dead. Reportedly, I lay unconscious in the back yard of this private residence for the next 8-9 hours. It was not until the next morning that I was found and the paramedics came to my aid. I am recounting this tragic event from the testimony I heard during the trial of the two attackers this past fall. God spared me the memory of what happened that night. Statement of Mr. David Ritcheson, Hearing on H.R. 1592, the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007” House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Tuesday, April 17

Maybe he was being honest about remembering nothing about that night, maybe he wasn’t. Ritcheson stated that he disliked being known as “the kid” who was attacked by skinheads. He just wanted to lead a normal life. But what is normal after you have been attacked so savagely by people in your own neighborhood? It is reported that Ritcheson refused any mental health services following the attack, his months’ long hospitalization and 30 surgeries necessary to heal from the attack. That is unfortunate. But many people of color believe that our burdens are to be borne in good humored, dignified silence no matter how much inner turmoil eats at our stomachs and psyche.

If you pray, maybe you would pray for Ritcheson’s family and friends. And maybe we could all be a little gentler with each other in his honor.

If you have a little money to spare, please consider helping the Ritcheson family with funeral costs. A trust has been set up at Bank of America:
Funeral Arrangements Account
Galvan Family Trust
Bank of America
ACCOUNT NUMBER 005864404494

Peace.

  • Renee
    What about the 12 year old??? Maybe he didn't know she was a 12 year old. Have you seen some of the 12 year olds I've seen as a middle school teahcer. What was she doing at the party in the first place? Anyway, you kick someone out of a party for an unwanted pass or tell them to knock it off, you don't shove a sharpened umbrella pipe up his rectum. Shame on you for bringing up the 12 year old as if it in some way explains things. You should read about the sick creeps who did this crime. They had a long history of hurting people of color before they got to David. They were looking for an excuse to get him that night.
  • Hi Alan, it is a sad commentary on our society. I missed the story when the attack originally happened. But,I couldn't finish my breakfast once I read that he had killed himself. I can only imagine David's anguish.
  • Alan
    A very sad commentary on our society when these countless acts occur. Silence in this society means consent. This should create enough outrage that no human should ever endure such violence. To hear the use of a swastika makes me sick. My Wife's Father is a survivor of auschwitz and buchenwald death camps. There silence meant consent from the german people and all who knew around the world. Shame on them all...
  • Teenagers are sometimes utterly blind to the fact that we live in a racist country. They believe all the stuff they see on MTV and broadcast television where people all live in harmony. My older son wants to visit the Georgia with his friends this month. "Don't worry," he says, "they told us where the safe places are." What a comment! Says a lot about our country when one has to be told what cities one can visit in Georgia and what cities one cannot. I keep telling my husband that my hispanic friends are beginning to understand how cruel and mean Americans can be to hispanics. I mean, sometimes they don't realize. But then when they visit Upsouth New York (as folks around here call upstate NY) they get a pretty good idea about how racist even NY can be. I just wish hispanics figure out soon that Americans can be pretty hateful...and no, being hispanic is not considered "white."
  • DinTN, welcome to the conversation. Under NO circumstances is torture an appropriate reaction to a pass. NO account, even from the skinheads, even implies there was force exerted on the 12 year old. Think about what you are saying. If they had thrown David out of the party, or even thrown a punch, who would argue with that? Did you not read the account of cigarette burns, and carving of swastikas in skin, and stripping him naked and sexual torture with a sharpened PVC pipe?
    Of course I think of the little girl. I think why would she be at such a party? I wonder what kind of home she lived in with brothers who are virulent racists and sexual torturers.
  • DinTN
    What about the little girl?

    "According to testimony, the attack was triggered by Ritcheson's drunken pass at another teen's 12-year-old sister."
    I feel for the family and they boys got what they deserved, but consider what would have happened to this little girl if the boys hadn't been there?
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