By TODD LEWAN,
AP National Writer
Sun Apr 8, 7:20 PM ET
ORLANDO, Fla. - It was a balmy night, the sort that brings the homeless out from the shelters, when the police were summoned to America Street. On the driveway of a condo, just a few paces from the gutter, lay a man. A dying man.
He looked to be 50-ish, and a resident of Orlando's streets, judging by the moldy jacket. And he'd been bludgeoned — so badly bludgeoned that he could hardly move.
Before being rushed to the hospital, where he died of his head injuries, the man, August Felix, described his attackers. Young fellows did it, he whispered to the officers who got to him first. Kids.
Within three months, two 16-year-olds and three 15-year-olds had been charged with second-degree homicide in the March 26, 2006, attack. The motive? "I don't think there was a motive," Sgt. Barbara Jones, a police spokeswoman, said, "other than, 'Let's beat someone up.'"
That high-schoolers had turned — allegedly on a whim — into executioners brought pause to city officials and advocates for the homeless, not just because the killing was unprovoked, but because it fit into a trend larger than Orlando: a nationwide surge in violence largely by teenagers and young adults against some of America's most vulnerable citizens.
A 2006 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless found 142 attacks last year against homeless people, 20 of which resulted in death — a 65 percent increase from 2005, when 86 were violently assaulted, including 13 homicides.
By comparison, 60 such attacks were reported in 1999, the year the coalition — the only entity to gather such data — began to study the problem.
And these numbers are likely low because they only reflect the most egregious attacks reported in newspapers or by agencies that serve the homeless and some victims themselves, according to Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the Washington-based coalition.
The trend is particularly troubling, he says, because such attacks no longer occur just in major cities on the East and West Coasts, as was the case in the 1980s.
In its most recent study, "Hate, Violence, and Death on Main Street USA," the coalition documented attacks against the destitute in 62 communities last year alone, in 26 states. Since 1999, such violence has occurred in 44 states and Puerto Rico, and in 200 communities nationwide.
An overwhelming majority of the attackers — 88 percent — were 25 or younger; 95 percent were male. No less than 68 percent of those accused and convicted in attacks were between the ages of 13 and 19.
This pattern of violence, in Stoops' view, hasn't gotten the attention it deserves from the public or law enforcement.
"Homeless people are the newest minority group in America that is 'OK' to hate and hurt," he said. "It's as though, somehow, they're viewed as less deserving, less human than the rest of us."
Americans did pay attention to the story of 58-year-old Jacques Pierre, a homeless man who'd been sleeping on a bench on a college campus when three teenagers woke him up, taunted him, then nearly killed him with baseball bats.
Why?
That Jan. 12, 2006, ambush in Fort Lauderdale was filmed by a surveillance camera, and broadcast worldwide.
"For once," says Sean Cononie, who operates a homeless shelter in that seaside city, "Americans saw with their own eyes how kids hunt down and kill homeless people as though it were a sport."
Such "sport" has occurred elsewhere:
_In Toms River, N.J., five high-school students were charged with beating a 50-year-old homeless man nearly to death with pipes and baseball bats — throwing hockey pucks at him for good measure — as he slept in the woods.
_In Butte, Mont., a 53-year-old homeless man was killed at a Greyhound bus depot because he refused to give another man a cigarette, according to court records. The victim's skull was fractured. The 22-year-old assailant received a 50-year prison sentence.
_In Spokane, Wash., a one-legged, 50-year-old homeless man was set on fire in his wheelchair on a downtown street; he died of his burns. Police charged a 22-year-old man with first-degree murder.
_In Nashville, Tenn., a 32-year-old homeless woman sleeping on a boat ramp was shoved into the Cumberland River, according to witnesses. Two men, ages 21 and 22, were charged with homicide in her drowning; authorities say the attack was unprovoked.
Cononie, who also publishes a monthly newspaper, "The Homeless Voice," reported another trend:
"Kids are even starting to videotape themselves hurting homeless people. That's something we never saw before."
He was referring to an February incident in Corpus Christi, Texas, in which a 22-year-old, a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old describe on camera how they are going to assault a homeless man, then do so.
On the tape, the attackers kick the man in the back, grab him, and flip him around to show off his injuries, according to police. The camera, which had been stolen, was recovered by the owner, who called police once she saw the footage.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070408/ap_ ... e_homeless
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