‘Look how they left him’
Brutal beating of immigrant, charges against six boys bring alarms in Lynn
By Maria Sacchetti
Boston Globe Staff
September 11, 2009
LYNN - Damian Merida was the seventh of 11 children born in a thatched-roof house with a dirt floor in Guatemala. He was just a boy when he left, following his brothers to the United States because their village had little food, no medicine, no work, and no future.
All of that he found here, in an immigrant enclave of Lynn. Everyone in his family knew how far they had come.
Then, in the middle of a warm summer day on July 22, the family’s vision of America was lost in a blur of bricks, rocks, bottles, and sticks.
As Merida slept under a shade tree in a Lynn park, a mob of children allegedly descended on the 30-year-old landscaper and savagely beat him. The vicious attack is provoking questions and inciting fear throughout this city and beyond, because police say he was targeted because of his ethnicity.
His alleged attackers are six boys age 11 to 14; most were on championship sports teams, and one is an immigrant himself, from West Africa, the Globe has confirmed.
Police are investigating whether the same group was responsible for an attack in the area two weeks before on another man from Guatemala, and are urging the victim to come forward.
Once stocky and strong, Merida is now in Tewksbury Hospital, learning to walk and feed himself. Family members say he has permanent brain damage and will never live and work on his own. Sometimes he suffers from long crying fits. His family is suddenly tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
“Look how they left him,’’ his 66-year-old mother, Teofila Merida, said in Spanish, covering her deeply lined face with hands wrinkled from decades of picking coffee and husks of corn. She stared at a photograph of her son in the hospital, his eyes swollen shut, his face covered in tubes, his legs wrapped in bandages. “I can’t understand why they would have done it.’’
The boys are facing multiple assault charges, including armed assault with intent to murder, and a civil rights violation because they allegedly targeted him as an immigrant. Authorities would not confirm the boys’ names because they are minors, and juvenile court proceedings are private.
Merida family members and the Daily Item of Lynn said the boys pleaded not guilty and all but one is free pending trial. Lynn public schools suspended four of the boys indefinitely, which they will appeal today, said Rick Iarrobino, a school official. The oldest boy, age 14, is still in state custody.
The sixth boy’s status is unclear. He attended St. Mary’s Junior-Senior High School last year but he did not re-enroll in the fall, the principal said.
Despite their anonymity, the boys are under heavy scrutiny as the city searches for answers. The Anti-Defamation League and the Latino Professional Network condemned the attack this week. Doubts about the attackers’ motive have also surfaced: Frances Martinez, executive director of the nonprofit La Vida Inc., said she did not believe Merida was targeted because of his ethnicity, as crime is widespread in Lynn.
But acting Police Chief Kevin Coppinger said witnesses said the boys targeted Merida because he is Latino. He urged immigrants to report crimes to the police even if they, like Merida, are here illegally and said the police do not generally ask about the immigration status of victims.
“The attack to us was a very serious incident, very out of the ordinary,’’ Coppinger said.
At least five of the six boys had won recognition in their community. Four were on Pop Warner football teams that were among the best in the state last year. In online photographs, one team is pictured being praised in a ceremony at City Hall. After the attack, the boys were allowed to play until the Merida family and others expressed outrage.
One of the boys is a soccer star from West Africa. He is pictured on the Internet with a medal around his neck. He is still playing in a private league, according to his coach, who said he believes the boy is innocent. The coach spoke on condition of anonymity.
Five boys are under age 14 and cannot be tried as adults, but they could be committed to the Department of Youth Services until they turn 18. The 14-year-old could be in DYS until he turns 21, said Stephen O’Connell, spokesman for the Essex district attorney’s office. The district attorney’s office is reviewing whether to try him as an adult.
Merida was not much older than the boys who are accused of attacking him when he decided to move to the United States. But he had a starkly different life.
He was born in a rural village near San Sebastian. His family slept in one large room, scrubbed clothes by hand, carried water for washing and cooking from the river, and cooked over an open fire, according to family members.
His mother, a quick, bubbly woman, said she raised them largely alone because their father, now dead, refused to recognize them all. Sometimes all they had to eat was egg soup seasoned with chili peppers.
None of the children spent more than a few months in school.
By age 11, Damian Merida worked in the fields. At 16, he followed his older relatives to the United States. He crossed the border illegally and took cash-only jobs in Massachusetts landscaping, cleaning, and cooking to send money home to his mother, who later joined them here.
In the United States, his family said, Merida blossomed from a skinny youth to a strong, handsome man. A skilled cook, he delighted his family by breaking two eggs at once, one in each hand, and frying them one-handed in the skillet.
Though still poor, he lives with other family members in a large house in Lynn, with an electric stove, a microwave oven, and plenty to eat.
But relatives said Merida also developed a vice: drinking alcohol. It started years ago when a girlfriend broke up with him, though family members said he had dramatically cut back in recent months.
Instead, he was attending an evangelical church with them, and talked about getting married. “I want to get my life in order,’’ his mother recalled him saying.
On July 22, he could not find work and decided to have a couple of beers and take a walk to Robert McManus Field, a wide, grassy park about a mile from his house, relatives said. Police said he settled down for a nap near a graffiti-strewn embankment just below the train tracks.
At 2:49 p.m., police said, someone called 911.
At Massachusetts General Hospital, where he spent the first few weeks, family and friends said he was barely recognizable. He cannot precisely remember the attack, friends and relatives say, but suffers violent flashbacks.
“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘Please stop, don’t hit me. Don’t hit me,’ ’’ said Nanci Pye, his landscaping boss. “And then he’ll start really crying.’’
He was recently transferred to Tewksbury Hospital. His family is trying to move him closer to Salem, so that his mother can see him more frequently, said his brother, Fredy Pojoy.
They are also raising money through Sovereign Bank for his care, Pojoy said.
Merida’s sister-in law and Pojoy’s wife, Maria Gonzalez, said the family has been shaken by the violence, and were troubled that the boys were allowed to return to Pop Warner football until there was public outcry over it. “My question is, when will we have justice?’’
Before the attack, Merida cared for his mother and they shared a room. Now, in the hospital, she curls up at the foot of his bed to keep him company.
“They tell me to be patient,’’ his mother said, her hands clasped in the apron of her lap. “If God allows it, he’ll come back. But he’ll never be the same.’’
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/11/attack_on_immigrant_raises_concerns_in_lynn/
