3 charged in immigrant beating death

POTTSVILLE, Pa. - Three young men were ordered yesterday to stand trial in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant after their friend testified that two of them sucker-punched and kicked the victim during a late-night melee.

Luis Ramirez's death last month has increased racial tensions in Shenandoah, about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, and yelling from protesters outside the courthouse forced a brief delay of yesterday's preliminary hearing.

Ramirez, an illegal immigrant, was attacked July 12 when he crossed paths with a group of current and former high school football players.

Magisterial District Judge Anthony Kilker ruled that prosecutors had enough evidence to try Colin Walsh, 17, and Brandon Piekarsky, 16, on third-degree murder and ethnic-intimidation counts. He threw out first- and second-degree murder charges against the pair.

A third defendant, Derrick Donchak, 18, was ordered to stand trial on charges of aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and other offenses.

The suspects, all Shenandoah residents, played football at Shenandoah Valley High School. Donchak, now enrolled at Bloomsburg University, was the quarterback last season.

Walsh sucker-punched Ramirez and Piekarsky then kicked the victim in the head while he lay motionless in the street, their friend Ben Lawson testified.

Lawson said he had been drinking malt liquor in the woods with Walsh, Piekarsky, Donchak and other friends before the attack. He said he drank two 40-ounce bottles and was intoxicated - a point seized on by attorneys for the defendants.

The prosecution "placed its whole case for murder on a 16-year-old who had consumed 80 ounces of malt liquor, who had a view from a darkened park across a darkened roadway," Frederick Fanelli, Piekarsky's lawyer, told the judge. "Is that it? We're going to hang him on that?"

Lawson testified that the group encountered Ramirez, 25, and a teenage girl in a park. He said another teen, Brian Scully, goaded the girl, saying, "Isn't it a little late for you to be out?"

Ramirez replied in a threatening manner in Spanish. Scully began yelling racial slurs at Ramirez and a fight ensued, Lawson said.

He said Ramirez was fighting with Donchak when Walsh ran up and punched him in the face. Ramirez hit his head on the macadam, leaving him unconscious, after which Piekarsky kicked him in the head, Lawson said.

The next day, he said, the group met at Piekarsky's house and hatched a plan to lie to police about what happened.

"We made up a plan that we were going to tell the cops that nobody kicked him, that there were no racial slurs, there was no booze, and Brian got hit first," Lawson said.

Under cross-examination, Lawson said he had been pressured by FBI agents to recant an initial, incomplete statement he gave to police in favor of a later statement.

Defense attorneys characterized the attack as a street fight in which both sides were throwing punches.

Roger Laguna, Walsh's lawyer, said Walsh was guilty of simple assault, nothing more. He "does exactly what Mr. Ramirez was doing. He throws a punch," Laguna said. He said Ramirez was "repeatedly attacking him, and won't quit."

Ramirez, who entered the United States illegally about six years ago, worked in a factory and as a farmhand. Crystal Dillman, 24, his fiance, who is white and grew up in Shenandoah, has said Ramirez was often called derogatory names and told to return to his homeland.