I wondered about the details, and still do. I will have to check the BBC again.
Does Michelle Malkin have anything to do with this?

Jesus Christ.

ok let's have the same ol' anti-reconquista meme: he must have been at least part-illegal, if not full-blooded illegal so he deserved it,

wait, the child that was hit sustained very minor injuries (a near miss)

and, the killed man wasn't even the driver,

but still I'm sure I'll hear it was his fault and no charges will come out of this mob lynching , Dobbs will be proud, one less leper in 'murka

Just one more horrifying act in a world gone mad! How can people not understand that it's ALL connected: Iraq, Afghanistan, NAFTA, CAFTA, G-8, gang war, skinheads, "domestic" violence, child molestation, etc., etc., etc.? People like to call me a conspiracy theorist. I'm not. But I damn sure see the connection between things most want to compartmentalize like they're all isolated incidents. This one made me crazy.

Another article I read about it said that Morales was trying to protect the driver at the time, and the crowd turned on him and started beating him.

It's still horrific, though.

i know, it's scary. i heard about this yesterday. he was on 6th street, which is the drinking drag for austin. when i heard about it, i pictured drunk men in groups trying to impress eachother--really scary.

My twin sister lived in Austin for a few years and even when she herself was drunk as hell, she was horrified by and scared of the crowd that was always on the main "drinking drag." She'd never seen anything like it - people combusting into near-murderous violence all the time without any discernable reason. Except it's not ever for no reason. I'm no fan of hanging around the generally shit-faced, but there is a hatefulness in that phenomenon that is not even about theories of mob mentality or lowered inhibitions from alcohol or any of that. Do I think anybody could get beat up unprovoked on that drag in Austin? Yes. Do I think Mr. Morales would have been beat to fucking death if he had been a white college guy, like a lot of the scariest dudes in that area? Please.

So easy to say "the suspect is 6'1, 190 pounds African-American and its considered armed and dangerous...." but not the other way around.

Interesting. The Mexican news page that I sometimes read (news from Tijuana...nothing much there) carried the story and they mention the race of everyone involved: victim is latino, child is black, attackers are black. Maybe their trying to downplay race in the U.S. since the cops said it wasn't a hate crime.

http://www.frontera.info/EdicionEnLinea/Notas/Internacional/21062007/247324.aspx

(sorry...I've forgotten what little HTML I knew)

Folks? He was "assaulted" by 2 to 20 "folks"? Good work, coppers. Sounds like they're right on top of this.

I'm glad a few of the Austinites weighed in (this is the dark side of the "Keep Austin Weird") weirdness.

What's very troubling about the comments I've seen on other forums (like Raw Story) is that those on the left side of the equation ASSUME this was a bunch of red-neck crackers, and on the right that Morales was a "Mexican," therefore "illegal" therefore somehow complicit in his own death (or deserving it).

This was a bunch of drunks (in this case, African-American) and whether it was a hate crime or not has still to be determined. I think it was, and if there is blame, it goes to people like John Talton and Tom Tancredo who have been inflaming the working people with the "Mescans are comin' for your job" rhetoric for too long. As far as I can tell, Mr. Morales was a typical Tejano -- i.e., as much "one of us" as anyone in Texas.

Very, very disturbing story.

I did the assume-they-were-drunk-and-scary-white-guys thing myself. Sucks, but I do still have that lens-o'-whitey where if a person's skin color isn't mentioned, I automatically think they're talking about white people. Which, I feel weird mentioning as it feels like a weirdly trivial me-me-me thing to say in this horrific context. But also it would have felt creepy to me to ignore it after my previous comment.

we're all learning as we go. without your honesty, the lessons would be weaker. so thank you.

i also assumed they were white. not necessarily due to to the unstated defaultness of "white" (and it's not unreasonable to assume if the race is unstated, that it means "white" by the way, not given the state of our media!) but due to the beating recently in my area of 20-30s white young men on two latinos.

yet, i am not relieved to hear the truth of things.

it was on the cover of the paper today. police are trying to 'quell' the racial tensions--right after u.s. borderwatch/minutemen/skinhead rally and all saturday. there is a benefit for the Morales family on the 23rd at cappuccinos.

damn, i wanna go home.

Because there were so few details in the news, I thought the whole affair had happened between Latinos :( The story sounded just like the lynching episodes we've lived in Guatemala. What a horrible way to die. Horrible also how this story has fueled the anti-immigrant movement.

Update:

The car hit a boy, not a girl.

Three to four people are reported to have attacked Morales.

It had nothing to do with the local Juneteenth celebration.

Saw it here.

"attacked" or "killed"?

thanks for the link and update on info, sylvia.

"attacked" or "killed"?

Both. And no problem.

sorry, sylvia. lately these stories begin to unsettle me in a deep way. didn't mean to be so terse with one of my closest blogmigas.

This one scares me.

The Republicans will eventually hit on the formula to get blacks and Hispanics to fight each other, then turn to the white (scant) majority and say that minorities clearly must be disenfranchised, which as Congress is learning is already well underway.

I watched such a scheme played out in Iraq, day after day since 2004, as I pored through reports at antiwar sites about how the US was bankrolling both Sunni and Shiite armed groups, some in the government, some outside, all at cross-purposes to each other. Then I heard the claims by Iraqis that cars blew up after they had been long delayed at American/Iraqi Army checkpoints while the driver cringed inside unable to see what was being done. Then I heard about British soldiers being captured by Iraqi police in Basra, out of uniform and in a car carrying explosives. You might have picked up on the story when the British Army attacked and destroyed the jail to get the soldiers back before they talked. Then I heard the claims by neighbors that the mosque in Samarra was visited by Iraqi soldiers for hours before it exploded.

Basically, your leaders knew after 4/04 that a majority of Iraqis wanted us out, so they had to create the conditions for us to stay. They had to keep that majority fighting each other. Suddenly they funded seperate units in the Iraqi government, some made specifically of ex-Baathists, others made up from the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Shia units were sent to slaughter Sunni rebels, and vice versa. Atrocities ensued, which the code of honor required to be avenged by the victims' relatives, so they predictably joined armed groups outside the government. Thereby making all subsequent mayhem plausibly deniable. Result: Bush can now call the Iraqis ungrateful and hint at a strongman suspending the next elections.

Imagine how much easier this would be for agents of the American government to accomplish on their own turf. Bush's wing of the GOP in 2000, allied to the evangelical Right, thought they could convert the more "entrepreneurial" Hispanics into Protestant Republicans using their dislike of gays and "lazy" blacks. Now that's all ruined and the California anti-immigrant wing is coming back with a vengeance. No doubt it will try to seduce blacks by arguing that all English-speakers are being screwed.

They're going to keep trying this crap until both minorities do what Iraqis have failed to do, which is to unite against the guys with the big guns and corporate media. Even when Bush is gone, his appointees, his worshippers among the nation's police, and a lot of unemployed Blackwater mercenaries will remain. Wouldn't it be perfect Rove to start a little race war to discredit a Democratic president and prepare for 2012?

Well according to the white supremacist trolls, who I won't let through at my site, this is just one more sign of the depravity of blacks.

I thought it was really interesting that the white supremacists sided with a Latino guy in this case, but I'm actually not surprised, any time a black person commits any type of crime they feel the need to come to my site and ask me why I didn't post about it or "why I am not defending "ni**ers", etc.

This is a bad crime, but from what's been released so far, it sounds like it wasn't a hate crime.

I was a co-worker with David and his sister liz.
They are good hardworking people. Liz is hurting so much! She has question that haven't been answered. All of the family is in shock. They think David is coming around the same time that he always did. He would go up stairs, shower, eat, and sit out visiting with the neighbors. She can't even go outside without crying. Please send all your prayers with the Family and if their is anyone that can help with her answer please help!!!!!