July 28, 2000

SOUTH OZONE PARK MAN SENTENCED TO 8 YEARS IN 1998 BIAS ATTACK

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced that a South Ozone Park man was sentenced today to 8 years in prison for a racially-motivated assault on a young man of Indian descent who was visiting his uncle in his South Ozone Park neighborhood in September 1998. Two other men were previously acquitted of the charges.

District Attorney Brown said, "This vicious and unprovoked attack on a defenseless young man because of his ethnicity shocked and outraged all of us. The victim, then 19 year old Rishi Maharaj, was kicked and punched and badly beaten by the defendant while he uttered racial slurs. When the victim's uncle, then 49 year old Prakash Gopee, went to his rescue, the defendant began beating Mr. Gopee. This attack is to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The sentence sends the clear message that attacks such as these will never be tolerated."

District Attorney Brown identified the defendant as Nuno Martins, 20, of 150-11 114th Street, South Ozone Park. He was convicted of Assault in the First Degree, Assault in the Third Degree and two counts of Aggravated Harassment after a 2-1/2 week trial before Supreme Court Justice Mark H. Spires who imposed the sentence today. Two other men, Peter DiMarco, 20, of 5-30 117th Street, College Point and Luis Amorim, 23, of 114-04 150th Avenue, South Ozone Park were previously found not guilty of the charges.

According to the testimony at trial, the victim and two female cousins were walking down 114th Street in South Ozone Park near their uncle's home talking to each other at about 9:00 p.m. on the night of September 20, 1998 when an airplane passed over head. The defendant, who was sitting on a nearby stoop, yelled to them to be quiet because, he said, they were disturbing his mother who was sleeping. The defendant walked towards the three, confronted them and, as Mr. Maharaj apologized for speaking "loudly", hit him in the head and continued hitting, punching and kicking him as he lay on the ground in a pool of blood. When one of the victim's female cousins begged the defendant to stop the vicious attack, he struck her and yelled another racial epithet. And then when the victim's uncle came to his nephew's rescue the defendant punched him as well. Mr. Maharaj sustained two fractures of the jaw, a broken left eye bone and a broken left temporal bone, among other serious injuries. The evidence showed that even after the police arrived the defendant continued making racial remarks.

Assistant District Attorney Mariela P. Stanton, head of the District Attorney's Anti-Bias/Youth Gang Bureau and Assistant District Attorney Rachel E. Buchter of the District Attorney's Appeals Bureau prosecuted the case.