Teen Apologizes For His Role In Luis Ramirez’s Death As Shenandoah, PA’s Community Remains Torn Apart

Brian Scully, 18, issued an apology today in juvenile court for the role he played in the death of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez. A county judge sentenced the teenager to 90 days in a treatment center.

Scully’s apology comes at a time where his community - the small town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania - remains torn apart by racial and ethnic tension.

Said a local woman, who chose to remain anonymous:

It’s only gotten worse since the verdict. The whole thing has set us backwards, and if the trial had swung the other way, it would have just been the whites who were angry.

She’s probably right to be cautious about talking to the press. When former cop Eileen Burke, the women who found Ramirez’s body after the attack, was quoted in a local paper saying she wasn’t sure about local authorities’ treatment of the case, she found her car egged. 

And, according to the NY Times, while many white residents in the town said they did not feel there was racial tension in Shenandoah, Latinos living in the community were more likely to feel the exact opposite. Said one Latino local whose son was threatened at his high school:

This town is a place where people can be very kind, but there are also a lot of folks who don’t like change and they don’t like people who are different, and they make sure you know it.

Other Latinos in the town shared their experiences as well:

One Mexican woman described how people yelled at them if they spoke Spanish in public. Another said that since the trial, more people in passing cars seemed to yell things at her as she walked home from work.

All of them added that most people in town did not act that way, but that there were enough exceptions to make them fearful.

“We have to walk very carefully in this town,” said Lupe Silva, who owns a secondhand store downtown and is Mr. Ramírez’s cousin. He said his shop window was shattered by vandals two months ago.

All of which prompts us to ask: What, exactly, leads to a change in how people in a town like Shenandoah treat one another? How do you alter people’s view or way of looking at the world? We suspect that news reports on racism and xenophobia do nothing but bolster racists and xenophobes opinion that Latinos and other minority groups in their communities lead to “nothing but trouble.” We guess the real question we have is: How do you humanize a group that others view as subhuman? Is it through knowing and interacting with them?

…Can the media play a role?

After Pennsylvania Trial, Tensions Simmer Over Race [NYT]