Attack On a 77 Year Old Woman

This story hits us personally.. Our good family friend's daughter is the grand-daughter of the woman attacked... (Her ex's mother is the victim).

How horrible to have happened during the holiays. Our friend is all shaken up, and I feel so horrible for her daughter- I hope she doesn't lose her grandma on the holiays.

BRIDGEPORT - An elderly Bridgeport woman is seriously injured after police say a man attacked her with a broken bottle as she was crossing the street.

Police say Marvin Narcisse stabbed an elderly woman while he was in his underwear.

Witnesses say the 77-year-old woman was walking across Williams Street earlier today when a man ran from across the street in his underwear, tackled her to the ground and beat her.

Residents in the area say they intervened to help the victim. "I kept stomping on him because he kept reaching for the lady," says one resident. "I kept stomping on his face."

The suspect was taken into custody, and faces attempted murder charges. He is being held on $1 million bond.

The woman was rushed to the hospital. Officials have not released any information on her condition or her identity.

Teen Beaten at Party Died From Lacerated Heart, Coroner Says

How could anyone, or in this case, any PEOPLE, do this??

God forbid someone killed one of my children- they'd have to put me away too because I'd kill the bastard(s).
Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Bobby Maurice Tillman, the Georgia teen stomped to death outside a home where a party was being held, died from a lacerated heart, Douglas County Coroner Randy Daniel told CNN Tuesday.

He said the 18-year-old likely suffered a break in a rib bone, which in turn punctured his heart. If the young man had not been stomped, he probably would not have been injured in that way and would have survived the beating, Daniel added.

Police say Horace Damon Coleman, 19, Emanuel Benjamin Boykins, 18, Quantez Devonta Mallory, 18, and Tracen Franklin, 19, stomped and beat Tillman outside a party in metro Atlanta over the weekend. The four men are facing felony murder charges.

Douglas County Sheriff Phil Miller has said the attack happened after some girls got into a fight, and one of them hit a boy. That boy, according to Miller, said he wasn't going to "hit a girl," but the next guy who came by was going to get "beat down."

Tillman walked by.

Miller said the victim was a "little guy, 18 years old, 5-foot-6, weighed 125 pounds."

"He was small in stature, but ... his spirit and his strength were bigger to me than this world," Tillman's mother, Monique Rivarde, told CNN Tuesday. "My son was bullied by four cowards."

No drugs or alcohol were found at the scene, according to the sheriff, who said he doesn't expect any more charges in the case.

Nice Mug Shot - Man Sentenced In Beating Death Of Woman

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A man who was indicted in July in connection with a woman's death entered a surprise plea in court and was immediately sentenced on Friday afternoon.

Officers arrested and charged 52-year-old Harold French in the assault and eventual death of Carla Pedraza this past summer.

Investigators said Pedraza was attacked in an open lot underneath Northeast Cesar Chavez Boulevard near Interstate 84 and Halsey Street on June 30.

Pedraza was rushed to the hospital but died on July 6 of injuries caused by blunt force trauma, police said.

French was scheduled to appear in court on a bail hearing but instead entered a plea of no contest to the murder charge and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

Child Found Beaten, Starved in Closet; Mom Arrested

APPLE VALLEY -- A mother and her teenage roommate have been arrested after authorities say they found her 5-year-old son 'weak and emaciated' inside a closet.

Officers say the child was living at a house in the 21000 block of Pahute Road along with 9 other children, 3 adults and a teenage boy.

An anonymous tipster called a child abuse hot line this week and reported that a young child was being held hostage and denied food and water in a house.

Deputies say the child had bruises and lacerations all over his body and immediately asked arriving deputies for water.

The victim was transported by ambulance to St. Mary's Hospital and later to Loma Linda University Children's Hospital for treatment. He's being treated for burns, bruises, cuts and malnutrition.

Deputies say the child's mother, 31-year-old Desiree Gonzales, and the 16-year-old male roommate had been beating, burning and depriving the child of food and water.

The suspects were displaying symptoms of being under the influence of suspected methamphetamine and were also identified as having Los Angeles area gang affiliations, deputies said.

The other 9 children were removed from the home by Children and Family Services. The victim was the only child that belonged to Gonzales.

Gonzales was arrested and booked into the West Valley Detention Center on charges of Child Abuse/Torture.

The 16-year old was arrested and booked into Juvenile Hall on the same charges. It's believed he may be Gonzales' boyfriend.

The other two adults in the house were not charged.

The investigation is on-going.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact Detectives Bessinger or Goddard at (909) 387-3615.

Ziegfeld Follies Curse?

Olive Thomas, another beautiful Ziegfeld Follies girl (like Martha Mansfield), tied tragically young:

After over a year together in California making pictures, with the usual occasional separations brought about by going on location (for example, Thomas was in Louisiana January - March, 1920, making a movie), Pickford and Thomas sailed from New York for Paris on Aug. 12, 1920. Upon arrival they checked into the Hotel Ritz for what was planned as a "second honeymoon" designed to save a failing marriage.

On the evening of Sept. 9 they went out on the town returning to their rooms about 3 a.m. Within a couple of hours, Pickford reportedly called downstairs that his wife had taken an overdose of medicine and needed a doctor. A doctor arrived in ten minutes to find Thomas "writhing in pain."

In his book, Foster provides a theory that many have ascribed to -- that Thomas took a large quantity of mercury bichloride which was prescribed to Pickford for his venereal disease and which he had also passed on to Thomas. He goes on to say that Pickford's doctor had admitted to prescribing the medicine for Pickford in 1917 as a treatment for syphillis.

Eyman quotes Pickford as saying he was in bed when he heard Thomas shriek from the bathroom, "Oh, my God!" He rushed to the bathroom and caught her in his arms. She had swallowed a lethal dose of mercury bichloride.

In her book Pickford, the Woman Who Made Hollywood (The University Press of Kentucky, 1997), author Eileen Whitfield said the couple had gone to bed after an evening of visiting "the bistros of Montmartre." A half hour later, Thomas was unable to go to sleep and reached for sleeping pills in the dark mistakenly grasping a bottle of bichloride of mercury. "Jack woke to Olive's screams as the pills burned through her throat and stomach. Or perhaps it was a maid who came to Olive's rescue - another story has it that Jack had slipped out for a last-minute round of drugs," she said.

Another version of the story, albeit not as popular, is that Thomas, who was known to be impetuous, took the pills to commit suicide, possibly after a row with Pickford.

Whatever the true story may be of what happened that night, Thomas suffered for another four days before she passed away.
(source: silentsaregolden.com)

Some say her ghost still haunts New York:

"At the beautifully restored New Amsterdam Theater, Olive Thomas -- 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World-- still takes center stage as she did when this was the home of the glamorous Ziegfeld Follies. In her hand, she clutches the small blue bottle which was the last thing she saw in life. "

(Allyn King on left, Olive Thomas on the right..)

Allyn King, Sucide:

A former Ziegfeld Follies girl and Broadway star.
When in the early 1920s it became fashionable for an actress to have a rather boyish figure, her contract mandated that she weigh no more than 115 lbs.

Died from injuries after jumping out a fifth story apartment building window. She had recently suffered a nervous breakdown believed to have been brought on by the stress of losing weight.

She was 29. (imdb.com)

(no picture yet =[ )

Then we have Bessie Poole:

Ziegfeld Follies dancer and mistress of W.C. Fields. She gave birth to William Rexford Fields Morris August of 1917. He was allegedy the illegitimate son of the great man. She gave the son up for adoption and tragically died ten years later in a barroom brawl defending a man in a speakeasy. (findagrave.com memorial, not the most detailed site..)

911 Calls Provide Disturbing Details in Death of 2-Year-Old Cleveland Girl

Fox 8- Shocking 911 calls show the chaos that occured when the unidentified adults with the child, called for help.

One caller says, "Lady I told you, maybe the little girl is dead, you know, died."

A 911 dispatcher tries to give the adults in the room with the two year old, instructions on how to perform CPR.

The dispatcher senses the adults are not following her instructions. "Are you doing what I'm asking you to do?" she asks.

Emergency responders seem to be shocked by what they find when they arrive at the apartment complex.

They immediately tell dispatchers that the child is dead and that this is a clear case of child abuse.

One first responder tells the dispatcher about the child's condition.

"The kids got bilateral burns on the hands, bruising across the whole forehead," he said.

He went on to say, "She's got a bitemark on the right elbow. She's got, what else, a lot of bruising."

The Cuyahoga County Coroner's office has identified the little girl as, Iris Rivera .

The Director of Children and Family Services tells Fox 8 News, "Iris died of blunt force trama to the abdomen." Her death has been ruled a homicide.

We're also told that the other four children have been placed in the emergency custody of their father.

Police say the child's mother was in the hospital at the time of her death.

So far, police have not identified any suspects in this case.

2 Teens Get Jail Time in Mexican's Beating Death

(CNN) -- Two Pennsylvania teens will serve time in a county jail for participating in a brawl that left a Mexican immigrant dead last July.

Brandon Piekarsky, 17, was sentenced to 6 to 23 months, and Derrick Donchak, 19, received 7 to 23 months for their roles in the beating death of 25-year-old Luis Ramirez.

Judge William Baldwin ordered the two to report to Schuylkill County jail on July 19 to begin serving their sentences.

An all-white jury convicted the two former high school football players of misdemeanor simple assault at trial last month and acquitted them of felony counts, including aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and hindering apprehension -- charges that carried lengthier sentences.

In fashioning his sentence, Baldwin acknowledged the severity of the attack, which left Ramirez on life support for two days before he died, but said he could pass a sentence only in accordance with the jury's verdict.

"This wasn't any fight, this was a group of young athletes ganging up on one person. That's not a street fight," Baldwin said, referring to the defense team's characterization of the confrontation as a "street fight."

"You picked out a guy who wasn't one of you and beat the pulp out of him," Baldwin said.

The incident divided the small, rural mining town of Shenandoah into camps for and against the boys as it became a flashpoint for racial tensions across the country.

After the verdict, Gov. Ed Rendell sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recommending that the Department of Justice pursue civil rights charges.

"The evidence suggests that Mr. Ramirez was targeted, beaten and killed because he was Mexican," Rendell said. "Such lawlessness and violence hurts not only the victim of the attack but also our towns and communities that are torn apart by such bigotry and intolerance."

During Wednesday's sentencing, Baldwin said he was surprised that Rendell had chosen to speak out on the case and told the court that his sentence was not affected by the governor's letter.

Fred Fanelli, Piekarsky's lawyer, said he felt the sentence was harsh, given the circumstances. The judge could have sentenced the teens to probation under Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines.

"I'm disappointed that the court exceeded the aggravated range and sentenced him to six months. Having said that, I'm glad we finally have some finality with this case," Fanelli told CNN affiliate WBRE after the sentencing.

Baldwin heard from several teachers, coaches and family friends who testified that the teens were good kids who fell into a bad situation. They urged leniency so the teens could realize their potential as adults.

Ramirez's longtime girlfriend and mother of two of his children read a statement in open court before an audience consisting mostly of the defendants' supporters.

"He was my one and only love, and they took him away from me, and they took my children's father," Crystal Dillman said. "Now I have to live without my best friend and love of my life."

The court also heard a prepared statement from Ramirez's mother, Elisa Zavala, who lives in Guanajuato, Mexico.

"I'm not the same person as before, now I feel a great emptiness within my heart," she wrote. "There are moments in which I'm alone and I ask myself: What do I do now that I don't have my son? I feel that without him, I am no one."

The judge also tacked on extra days to each boy's sentence for consuming alcohol earlier in the evening. For providing the alcohol to his friends before the fight, Donchak was also convicted of corrupting minors.

Jurors found Piekarsky not guilty of third-degree murder. Prosecutors had said he delivered a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after Ramirez was knocked to the ground in the alcohol-fueled brawl, which occurred on a residential street in Shenandoah the evening of July 12.

Prosecutors alleged that a group of teens, which included Piekarsky and Donchak, baited Ramirez into the initial confrontation after a night of drinking, hurling racial epithets at the undocumented Mexican immigrant.

After the fight broke up, witnesses said Ramirez came back at the teens, who beat him so severely that, according to a medical testimony, brain tissue oozed out of his skull during surgery at a hospital.

Jurors heard from several teens who witnessed the incident but did not participate, as well as one teen who pleaded guilty in juvenile court and another whose case is being handled in federal court. The testimony painted a picture of confusion, with several inconsistencies as to who did what.

Defense lawyers argued that Ramirez's death was a street brawl gone wrong that was not motivated by racial bias. They also suggested that Ramirez was responsible for triggering the second confrontation.

Advocacy groups condemned the verdict and sentences, and called on the Department of Justice to bring federal hate crime charges against the defendants.

"The meager sentences handed to the defendants today leaves justice gasping for further redress," said Gladys Limon, staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Citing FBI statistics, Limon said that hate crimes against Latinos have risen 40 percent in the last five years and called on Congress to strengthen hate crime laws.

"The failure to hold these defendants responsible for their atrocious crimes denies justice not just to the Ramirez family, but also to the entire community by failing to deter similar crimes in the future," she said.

Richard Cohen, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the case had troubling implications in the wider context of race relations nationwide.

"Since the year 2000, we've seen a 50 percent surge in the number of hate groups across the country, to a record 926 by our latest count," he said.

"The increase has been fueled by the same factor responsible for the rise in the anti-Latino hate crimes -- a backlash against the changing demographics of our country, a backlash fueled by politicians trolling for votes and pundits looking for ratings."

Two Women Arrested In Beating Death of a Man in Forest Park

ST. LOUIS, MO-- Two women are in police custody and accused of the murder. St. Louis investigators say the women are responsible for the beating death of a 26 year old man whose body was found in Forest Park.

Willard Payne's body was found in the Kennedy Forest near a jogging trail Monday morning, just west of the St. Louis Zoo.

According to police, Payne met the women at a different location and asked them to smoke some marijuana with him. They eventually ended up in Forest Park. The women told police he then made some verbal advances towards the 25-year old female. She said no, so he allegedly started doing to same to her 20-year old companion.

It was later discovered by police that the women were apparently girlfriends, both of whom were larger than the victim. Reports indicate they started beating him. Payne ran and they then caught him and beat him to death, according to police.

Police caught the pair because they initially reported that the man tried to rape them. Police now say that's not the case. The names of the women will likely be released later Tuesday.

People Like This Shouldn't Have Children

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Police claim an Austin man bit and kicked his 2-year-old daughter in the face.

According to an arrest warrant made public Wednesday, police said Ricardo Luna, 23, was mad at his daughter last month because she would not lie down with him. Luna's girlfriend, the child's mother, said Luna was drunk, became upset at the girl and bit the toddler on the cheek.

The girlfriend said she and Luna then began arguing. The child started crying as a result of the argument. That is when Luna's girlfriend claims he kicked the 2-year-old in the face.

"She's a [expletive deleted] crybaby, that's all," Luna reportedly said to his girlfriend after kicking their child. "You spoil her."

The child's mother called 911 after the May 17 incident. Luna was booked in the Travis County Jail on May 28. He is being held on injury to a child causing bodily injury, assault causing bodily injury to a family member and terroristic threat.

If convicted, he could face 10 years in jail or more, depending on how the charges are stacked in court.

This is not Luna's first brush with the law. Luna has been convicted of assaulting a family member. He has also been charged with assault of a non-family member two times and violating a restraining order.


..Yeah, and he claims she's a crybaby. Then why do you have an ugly tattoo of what appears to be a tear on your own douche looking face?

Tortured Teen Testimony Released

A 16-year-old allegedly tortured for a year inside a Tracy home told a grand jury that he escaped because his captors talked about killing him and dumping his body in the Delta.

Afraid for his life, the boy — called Kyle in court papers — fled the Tennis Lane home on Dec. 1 by unlocking himself from the fireplace to which he was chained and using a trampoline to hop over the backyard wall. He then limped across an adjacent parking lot and into the lobby of a sports club, where employees called police for help.

After he heard his alleged captors talking on speakerphone about how they planned to cut off his fingers with a meat cleaver, Kyle said he knew then that he had to find a way out.

“I had to hurry up and leave or it was just going to be the end from there,” he said in a newly unsealed 928-page transcript of a grand jury hearing that led to a slew of indictments against the four adults accused of imprisoning Kyle.

Husband and wife Michael Schumacher and Kelly Lau were arrested in December along with next-door neighbor Anthony Waiters and a woman named Carén Ramirez who called herself Kyle’s mom. Police said they starved, drugged and beat the boy for as many as 18 months after he fled a Sacramento group home in spring 2007.

The four could spend life in prison if found guilty of the several charges of torture, kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault with caustic chemicals and other forms of abuse. All except Schumacher pleaded not guilty to all charges. He has yet to enter a plea. The four are due in court again on June 18.

Kyle told the grand jury that the abuse escalated from slapping and punching to slicing flesh and drawing blood for offenses as minor as forgetting to feed the dog or for taking food to slake his hunger.

Waiters once sliced Kyle’s arm with a steak knife, Kyle said. Ramirez held his arm down and Kyle screamed, the boy alleged. Kyle said that afterwards, the pair poured bleach on his cuts and doctored them with salt and butter before wrapping his arm in a paper towel.

Other times, Ramirez, Lau and Waiters would stick an aluminum baseball bat into the fireplace and brand Kyle’s back, the teen said.

“Carén and Kelly came up with the idea of, like, heating the bat up, and then I guess they started branding me with the bat,” Kyle said.

The boy said Schumacher would sometimes punch him in the face until he passed out. Kyle also said he was chained to the fireplace, where he was forced to sleep most nights.

Lau used a belt once to choke him until he lost consciousness, Kyle said. She allegedly strapped a belt around his neck and buckled it. He dropped to the fireplace hearth and his arm fell on the grate while the fire blazed, he said.

“When I first woke up, I didn’t know what happened or anything,” he said. “So then I immediately noticed my arm was, like, discolored and everything, and I was, like, really freaking out, and at first I didn’t feel anything.”

To treat the burn, Kyle said Ramirez would just pour bleach on it. His wounds scabbed over and became infected.

The boy said he never saw a physician and had been kept out of school since the eighth grade.

He said he hasn’t seen his mother, Susan Barnett, since he was about 8 years old, when Ramirez somehow obtained custody of him and his brother. Barnett has since died.

Kyle said Ramirez talked him into running away from a Sacramento foster home. He wound up living with her and a woman named Catherine Cockrell in Pleasanton. Cockrell introduced Ramirez to Lau and Schumacher, who opened up their home to the pair in July 2007.

From there, Kyle recounts horrific abuse. He said the family forced him to do all the chores and make him kneel for hours on the floor until his knees hurt. He said he was hit constantly and never got to shower. The family, he said, would rarely call him by his real name, and Ramirez, he added, would refer to him as “Iggit.”

Kyle was allegedly abused nearly every day until he bled, and that’s the only reason he ever got new clothes, he said.

Sometime in fall 2008, Lau poured him a cup of “Red Hot Damn,” a spicy cinnamon liquor, said Waiters’ niece, Chelsea Waiters, 16. She said Kyle drank it, got sick and vomited. Lau then screamed at him, Chelsea told grand jurors.

At other times, the adults would force him to chew marijuana and make him drink liquor, the boy said.

The four Schumacher children, ages 1 through 9, said they understood that what was happening to Kyle was “bad,” but they didn’t want to tell anyone. The oldest child said she actually liked that Kyle lived with her family because he would hang out with her and help her with homework.

Grand jurors also interviewed detectives, friends and family of both the victim and the suspects and neighbors.

LAPD Detective Charged With Capital Murder

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Veteran Los Angeles Police Detective Stephanie Lazarus, suspected of murdering an ex-boyfriend's wife in 1986, was charged with capital murder Monday. Lazarus will be arraigned Tuesday.

Police arrested Stephanie Lazarus, 49, after a sample of her DNA matched DNA taken from the scene of a 1986 cold case murder.

Lazarus is accused of beating and fatally shooting 29-year-old Sherri Rasmussen. On February 24, 1986, Rasmussen's husband, John Ruetten, found her body in the living room of their Van Nuys condominium. She had been shot multiple times. Lazarus had a relationship with Ruetten before his marriage.

Lazarus is being held without bail at the Los Angeles County jail. At one time, the LAPD detective was mentioned in the original homicide case because of her relationship with Ruetten, but Lazarus wasn't considered a suspect because investigators believed Rasmussen was a victim of armed robbers.

The president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, Paul Weber, said the arrest of the veteran LAPD detective is disturbing. "If convicted, the actions of one police officer should not tarnish the trust and respect the public has for the more than 9,800 dedicated police officers," said Weber.

Celebs Donate $12K to Legal Fund

TOLEDO, Ohio - Celebrity fashion designers Kimora Lee Simmons and her ex-husband Russell Simmons have pledged a combined $12,000 toward the legal defense fund of Trevor Casey, the 14-year-old Toledo teen arrested in an alleged brutal attack in May.

Kimora Lee, a former fashion model, is the creative director for Phat Fashions. Russell is the co-founder of the hip-hop music label Def Jam Records, founder of Russell Simmons Music Group, and owner of the fashion line Phat Farm.

"The magnitudes of Russell Simmons and Kimora Simmons, and just the influence they have over the hip hop culture, it's good to see them step up," said Bishop Stephen Ward, spokesman for the Casey family.

Kimora Lee posted on her celebrity blog on GlobalGrind.com that was was "astounded" when she viewed a YouTube.com clip from a resident from the Brand Whitlock Homes in the central city who captured the alleged brutal beating.

The graphic video clip showed some of what Trevor had to deal with May 15.

Witnesses said the actions by two Toledo police officers happened after Trevor was slow to move when he was asked to get off a porch at the Brand Whitlock Homes. Because the teenager didn't follow orders, witnesses allege the brutality.

After his arrest, Trevor was taken to the Juvenile Justice Center downtown and charged with aggravated assault and resisting arrest. After that court appearance, the Caseys went over to Toledo police's internal affairs unit and filed an excessive force complaint.

Though Toledo police officials have not spoken officially about this incident, a police report was filed. The report said things went down quite differently Friday evening than what witnesses and family stated.

The reporting officer claims that Trevor was asked several times to leave the front porch, after loitering. When he wouldn't comply, officers tried to arrest the teen, but he struggled. The struggle led to a full fight. Trevor also allegedly hit one of the officers in the chest, the report stated. The officers applied joint pressure and body strikes to the teen. Still, the the report states that teen did not comply. Police also said the teen had been smoking marijuana.

Trevor spent the day at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center and was run through a battery of tests.

Finkbeiner administration spokesperson Megan Robson said Police Chief Mike Navarre does not have plans to release information pertaining to the investigation.

Both Kimora Lee and Russell have pledged to donate $12,000, about $6,000 a piece, in support of the defense fund. Through her blog post, Kimora Lee has asked "anyone else who has suffered at the hands of those who have a sworn duty to protect and honor them" to donate to the fund.

"In addition, she said for every dollar donated she will match it as well," ward said. "At this point she has donated, I believe, close to $6,000."
Ward said local contributions to Trevor's defense fund can be made at any National City Bank branch in care of the "Trevor Casey Legal Defense Fund." Kimora Lee also posted another address on her celebrity blog to send contributions to in care of Ronny L. Wingate, Esq., 1119 Adams Street, 2nd Floor, Toledo, OH 43604.

While this case is still under investigation, supporters of the Casey family say it's not about personal gain.

"It's not about me, and it's not about my city council run, at all," Ward said. "It's about seeking justice for what's right and it about standing up for what is right."

NO MURDER CONVICTION In Immigrant's Beating

POTTSVILLE, PA (CNN) -- A fomer Pennsylvania high school football player was acquitted of murder Friday in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant last summer.

However, a Schuylkill County jury found Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak guilty of simple assault stemming from the death of Luis Ramirez, who died of blunt force injuries to the head after a fight with the defendants and their friends.

Donchak, 19, was also found guilty of providing alcohol to the group of teens that encountered Ramirez the night of July 12 on a residential street in the rural mining town of Shenandoah.

Both teens were acquitted of ethnic intimidation charges.

Prosecutors alleged the teens baited the undocumented Mexican immigrant into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth.

He died two days later in a hospital in Danville.

Piekarsky, 17, had faced a charge of third-degree murder for allegedly delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground. He also was found not guilty of ethnic intimidation, aggravated assault and attempting to solicit a cover-up.

An all-white jury of six men and six women heard from several prosecution witnesses, including a juvenile co-defendant and another teen who pleaded guilty in federal court for his role in the fight.

While the jury heard conflicting accounts about who initiated the encounter or delivered the final kick to Ramirez's head, defense lawyers attempted to place the blame on another co-defendant, who is facing charges in juvenile court, and Colin Walsh, who has pleaded guilty to violating Ramirez's civil rights.

The juvenile admitted on the stand to shouting "go home you Mexican [expletive]" after the first fight dispersed, prompting Ramirez to turn back and attack him.

The juvenile's testimony was corroborated by Walsh, who admitted to punching Ramirez and knocking him to the ground after he charged the juvenile.

Both witnesses said Piekarsky delivered the final blow to Ramirez's head while he was on the ground, but others testified that they couldn't be certain who had actually kicked him.

The incident drew national attention to the small town of Shenandoah, highlighting issues of race relations.

Jury Has Case of Teens Accused In Immigrant's Fatal Beating

POTTSVILLE, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A Pennsylvania jury began deliberations Friday after hearing closing arguments in the trial of two high school football players accused in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant last summer.

Brandon Piekarsky, 17, is charged with third-degree murder, ethnic intimidation and other offenses for the death of Luis Ramirez, who died of blunt force injuries to the head after a fight on a residential street in the rural mining town of Shenandoah.

Derrick Donchak, 19, is charged with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation for his alleged role in the July 12 melee, which prosecutors say was racially motivated.

Schuylkill County prosecutors said the defendants and their friends encountered Ramirez after a night of drinking while the undocumented Mexican immigrant was walking a female friend home.

A physical altercation ensued and ended. But as Ramirez was walking away, someone in the group shouted racial epithets, prompting Ramirez to resume a fight that ended with him convulsing in the street and foaming from the mouth, according to prosecutors.

He died two days later in a hospital in Danville.

An all-white jury of six men and six women heard testimony from several prosecution witnesses, including a juvenile co-defendant and another teen who pleaded guilty in federal court for his role in the fight.

Piekarsky allegedly kicked Ramirez in the head after someone else knocked him to the ground, exacerbating head injuries he'd suffered in the initial fall. Donchak was accused of cursing at him and punching him during a confused tangle of punches, kicks and racial slurs.

While the jury heard conflicting accounts about who initiated the encounter or delivered the final kick to Ramirez's head, defense lawyers attempted to place the blame on co-defendant Brian Scully, who is facing charges in juvenile court, and Colin Walsh, who has pleaded guilty to violating Ramirez's civil rights.

Scully admitted on the stand to shouting "go home you Mexican [expletive]" after the first fight dispersed, prompting Ramirez to turn back and attack him.

Scully's testimony was corroborated by Walsh, who admitted to punching Ramirez and knocking him to the ground after he charged Scully.

Both witnesses said Piekarsky delivered the final blow to Ramirez's head while he was on the ground, but others testified that they couldn't be certain who had actually kicked him.

The incident drew national attention to the small town of Shenandoah, highlighting issues of race relations.

The defendants face prison time if convicted of the top charges.