Judiciary Report - David Ritcheson

| |

David Ritcheson - A Very Sad Story

July 2, 2007

After suffering a brutal race based attack, 18-year-old David Ritcheson, took his life by jumping over board, whilst on a cruise ship.

The young man was brutally sodomized by two men using a patio umbrella. Then he was burned with cigarettes, beaten with a pipe, beaten with fists, doused in bleach and left for dead.

He was rushed to the hospital in the morning. He physically recovered after 30 surgeries, surviving the attack, but the emotional and psychological damage that was done to him was too much for the teenager to bear. So sadly, he reportedly took his life.

I am sorry he didn’t get some type of therapy. In this case therapy wouldn’t mean he was crazy, just emotionally wounded and in need of help to work through what happened.

My condolences to his family.

"Teen victim of Spring pipe attack dies after apparent jump from ship. LULAC official says family told the 18-year-old went overboard on Carnival cruise

An 18-year-old was observed by "a bunch of people" jumping over the railing of the upper deck of Carnival Cruise Lines' Ecstasy around 7:35 a.m. Sunday, said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.

A written statement from the cruise line also said an 18-year-old appeared to jump from the ship.

Carnival Cruise Lines officials would not confirm his identity, but Rick Dovalina, head of LULAC in Houston, said Sunday night that he learned through the family's attorney, Carlos Leon, that 18-year-old David Ritcheson has died...

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!"...

Trial testimony revealed Ritcheson and Gus Sons, whom he'd befriended at an alternative school for students with disciplinary problems, met up with Tuck and Turner at a crawfish festival in Spring the night of the attack. From there, they went to Sons' house, where they drank vodka, smoked marijuana and used cocaine and Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.

Sons testified that Tuck and Turner attacked Ritcheson because they believed he stole some drugs and tried to kiss Sons' 12-year-old sister.

Tuck and Turner dragged Ritcheson, who was Hispanic, into the backyard, where they taunted him with racial slurs, punched and kicked him in the head and burned him 17 times with cigarettes. They tried to carve a swastika into his chest.

His attackers poured bleach on his face and body and left him for dead. No one called for an ambulance until well after daybreak.

The former Klein Collins High School running back and freshman homecoming prince spent three months and eight days in the hospital and endured more than 30 surgeries.

He was coping with the past, he said last spring, "by not thinking about it." He declined psychiatric help.

Ritcheson called on Congress to strengthen U.S. hate crime laws.

"I appear before you as a survivor," Ritcheson told members of a House Judiciary subcommittee April 17. "I am here before you today asking that our government take the lead in deterring individuals like those who attacked me from committing unthinkable and violent crimes against others because of where they are from, the color of their skin, the God they worship, the person they love, or the way they look, talk or act." - Houston Chronicle