From: v-nguyen@cis.ohio-state.edu (Viet-Anh V Nguyen)
Subject: [SAD NEWS] Bias-Incited Beating Death of a Vietnamese (cont.)
Originator: v-nguyen@retina.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 17:49:41 GMT

Excerpted from the NYT, Sunday, August 23, 1992.


BIAS-INCITED BEATING DEATH OF A VIETNAMESE STUNS A FLORIDA TOWN

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., Aug 21 - Last weekend in this small Southeast Florida
city, a 19-year-old pre-medical student who came to this country as a child
with his parents from Vietnam, was fatally beaten by a group of young white
men after he objected to a racial slur one of them used.

The student, Luyen Phan Nguyen, of Coral Springs, died Monday. The Broward
County Medical Examiner said the fatal blow was a kick behind an ear that
fractured a neck bone and severed arteries.

On Wednesday, with newspapers and television stations reporting each develop-
ment, the police began arresting young men they said were tied to the beating.

On Thursday, 175 friends and family members held a Buddhist ceremony for Mr.
Nguyen, and some prayed near where he was beaten. Afterward, the county's small
Asian community pleaded for justice.

Former classmates at Coral Springs High School said Mr. Nguyen was popular and
an excellent student. He was on the school math team, ran track and was in the
environmental club. He would have been a sophomore this fall at the University
of Miami.

Lingering Unease for Residents
------------------------------

With the arrests and the family's anguish receiving wide publicity, residents
said it would take a long time to recover from the kind of violence and bias
that were virtually unknown in their upper-middle-class city of 85,000 people.

"This is Coral Springs, a family neighborhood," said Yazid Ali, who moved here
a year ago from Jamaica, Queens, with his wife and young son. "In this neigh-
borhood, you can't fix your car in the street. You get a ticket for that. You
can't have a sign advertising your business on your car. There are many rules.
I can't understand how this could happen."

The incident began late Saturday at a party attended by Mr. Nguyen and the 
young men in the apartment complex where Mr. Ali lives. Someone made a deroga-
tory remark about Mr. Nguyen's nationality. He protested and left, witnesses
told the police. They said several young men followed Mr. Nguyen out the door.

"It started off with some young guy wanting to be a tough guy, and everybody
just got involved," said a police investigator, James P. Milford. "They chased
him down like a hunter chases down an injured deer."

Mr. Ali said he heard cursing and "drunk talk" around 11 PM in a grassy area
between buildings. He went to his balcony and saw 15 to 20 people, some of them
hitting someone on the ground.

"I yelled, 'Let him up, let him up!'" Mr. Ali said. "They were really beating
up this kid."

8 Arrested in Beating
---------------------

A neighbor telephoned the police as the beating continued and after a few 
minutes, Mr. ALi said, it stopped. Witnesses said the attackers got into cars
and left as residents tried to help Mr. Nguyen, who appeared to have stopped
breathing. Paramedics arrived and took him to a Fort Lauderdale hospital, where
officials said he was on a life support system until he died.

By Friday, the police had arrested eight men in the case, 18 to 22 years old,
and charged them with second-degree murder.

Coral Springs's police chief, Roy A. Arigo, said that some of the suspects had
minor criminal records but that most were middle-class working men with no
record of trouble. One had just returned home after completing Marine boot
camp at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and one said he was unemployed. The others said
they worked at resorts, automobile dealerships and other businesses.

Rights groups issued pleas for tolerance, saying they feared the incident might
be an indication that bias was on the rise here. The state authorities said 43
bias crimes were reported in Broward County in 1991, none involving Asians.

Like Mr. Ali, many Coral Springs residents seemed to fear that the kind of 
violence they fled in other parts of the country and they associate with other
parts of Southeast Florida seemed to be gaining in the city.

Coral Springs's Mayor, Jeanne Mills, blamed "a party out of control," where
"everyone was under some kind of influence."

Chief Arigo said: "Coral Springs enjoys a very low crime rate. In fact, the
crime rate is the lowest for a city of our size in Southeast Florida, but this
just goes to show you that no matter where you live, violence is part of socie-
ty."