Neo-Nazi Convicted in Savage Anti-Latino Assault: Teen Needed 30 Surgeries

 It was attacks like this one that hate-crimes legislation was created for. A Latino teenager attended a party in April 2006 at a housing complex just north of Houston, in a town called Spring. According to witnesses, the 17-year-old tried to kiss a white girl. She rebuffed him and told her brother about the advance. Word spread. The extreme violence that followed illustrates the savagery that can result from this country's rising tide of anti-Hispanic hatred. David Tuck, 18, a neo-Nazi with a reputation for racist outbursts, confronted the Latino teen, with whom he had previously consumed a cocktail of vodka, marijuana, cocaine and Xanax, a prescription anti-anxiety medication, and dragged him outside. With the assistance of his friend Robert Turner, 17, Tuck then commenced a four- to five-hour beating in which the victim was stripped, kicked with steel-toed boots, and severely sodomized with a patio-umbrella pole. Finally, Tuck and Turner stood their victim against a fence and poured bleach all over his body. According to prosecutors, Tuck at one point also attempted to slash something into the semi-conscious victim's chest and burned him with cigarettes. Witnesses say Tuck yelled ethnic slurs and shouted, "White power!" during the attack. The victim did not receive medical attention until the morning, when the woman who owned the apartment awoke and found him in the backyard. Although doctors did not expect the boy to survive, after three months in intensive care and 30 surgeries, he returned to school in a wheelchair, attached to a colostomy bag. [MORE]