Anthony Fortunato, 21, became the second man to be convicted of manslaughter as a hate crime in the targeted robbery of Michael Sandy which resulted in his death.
A friend of John Fox and Fortunato, Joseph Folio, 17, testified that the day after the botched robbery the two men were laughing over a New York Post headline: "Left for dead in thug attack."
Prosecutor Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi said that on Oct 08 2006 Fortunato hatched the idea to meet a man in a gay chat room, direct him to a remote pickup spot on Plumb Beach and rob him. He allegedly bragged to his friends - Ilya Shurov, 21, Fox, 21, and Gary Timmins, 17 - that gay men were easy targets, adding he had pulled a similar ambush before.
Fortunato's defense attorney said Fortunato had a more complex plan in mind: He hoped to take Sandy's money, buy pot, smoke it with his friends, tell them he was gay - and then maybe get lucky with Sandy. But Shurov allegedly sucker-punched Sandy, who fled onto the Belt Parkway. A witness said that his attackers pinned Sandy to the hood of a car before he wrenched away - straight into an oncoming vehicle.
The prime suspect in a deadly assault that outraged Sacramento's gay community has fled to Russia, Sacramento County sheriff's investigators said Tuesday.
Another suspect in the July death of Satender Singh, which authorities are calling a hate crime, is scheduled to make his first court appearance today on charges connected to the incident.
The naming Tuesday of Andrey Vusik, 29, of West Sacramento, who is out of the country, and Aleksandr Shevchenko, 21, of Sacramento marked a major step forward in the explosive case, said Sheriff John McGinness.
Vusik is charged with involuntary manslaughter rather than murder because the evidence does not show any intent to kill Singh, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office said in a statement released Tuesday.
But Tuesday's action brought at least one family closer to a resolution.
"We are relieved that he will have justice," said Singh's uncle Camie Bhuie, "and we hope they can bring back the other culprit soon."
The news arrived a month after the death of 26-year-old Singh, a native of Fiji, who died July 5 of head trauma, days after he was punched in a confrontation on the Lake Natoma shore.
In the month since, the incident has reverberated across the local gay community and captured the attention of state and national politicians, who are pushing for tougher hate-crime legislation.'
Singh's friends and supporters have said the assault was fueled by homophobia and hate, coming after a string of racial slurs and anti-gay jibes allegedly made by a Russian-speaking group at the state park.
"It is important to make a statement that we as a society will not tolerate this kind of behavior," McGinness said at a news conference Tuesday announcing the suspects.
Homicide investigators say Vusik threw the lethal punch.
The West Sacramento man, whose wife and children remain in the area, is still at large in Russia, where he is being sought on a charge of involuntary manslaughter and committing a hate crime, said Sgt. Connie Merkins of the sheriff's homicide bureau.
In an interview with The Bee, Vusik's wife, Tatyana, insisted he is innocent and acted in self-defense -- not out of hate. She characterized Singh's death as an accident.
The other suspect in the case, Shevchenko, surrendered voluntarily at his home Monday, according to Merkins. He is charged with intimidation and interfering with a victim's rights, which is also a hate crime.
Merkins said the Sheriff's Department is working with the FBI to find Vusik and extradite him from Russia. FBI officials have declined to comment on the case.
"We actually talked to him by telephone on Sunday," Merkins said. "He said this has scared the hell out of him."
Merkins said Vusik and Shevchenko were identified based on witness interviews -- along with a license plate number supplied by Singh's friends and a fingerprint found on evidence gathered by state park police.
The sheriff also acknowledged a "good old-fashioned gumshoe" effort.
If convicted, Vusik could face a maximum of eight years in prison, while Shevchenko faces a maximum of three years.
Shevchenko, who remained at the main jail in lieu of $25,000 bail, could not be reached Tuesday.
In the weeks since Singh's death, Tatyana Vusik said she has struggled with the serious accusations that have clouded her family and the larger Slavic community. The crime, she said through a Russian translator, has become exaggerated in political circles. She said gay activists are trying to make an example of her husband, who she says is "a good man."
That day at Lake Natoma, Tatyana Vusik said she and her family were relaxing and enjoying the view.
Her husband barbecued, while their young children played nearby.
It seemed like a pleasant afternoon, Tatyana Vusik said, until a neighboring party -- which included Singh -- grew raucous.
She said the revelers were drinking alcohol, swearing loudly and dancing provocatively.
The mother said she then saw Singh leap onto a table, swishing his shirt between his legs. Others around him smashed bottles. She said she saw two men kissing.
"We're a Christian family," Tatyana Vusik said.
She said she asked her husband to tell Singh's group to calm down, that there were children present.
At that point, Tatyana Vusik said, the other group began attacking her family verbally, telling them to go back to Russia. She said the group cursed at her and her sister, Dasha Yakovchuk.
Tatyana Vusik recalled that it was Singh who first mentioned "gay" as part of a crude sexual invitation apparently meant for her husband.
She recalled that her husband said the atmosphere was growing tense, so he used the word "gay" as part of a joke.
She said neither she nor her husband is part of any anti-gay group or movement.
An earlier version of events from the Sheriff's Department has confirmed that there was a confrontation between the two groups, but that the "Russian-speaking" group had hurled homophobic slurs at Singh and racial remarks at him and his friends, according to witness statements.
"That's what they say, but they don't know the truth," Yakovchuk told
The Bee in an interview Tuesday. "It was exactly the other way around."
Tatyana recalled that after the exchange began, she, her sister and the children left the park. Her husband and Shevchenko and another friend stayed behind.
When Vusik came home later that night, he told his wife there was a confrontation, and he acted in self-defense. She recalled that Vusik said Singh had lifted a broken glass bottle and aimed at him. He threw a "soft punch" and ran away, Tatyana Vusik said.
Sheriff's detectives said there are no accounts from independent witnesses or any of Singh's friends that support that account.
Tatyana Vusik said her husband had no idea that Singh had died when he left in early July for a business trip exporting vehicles.
She refused to disclose her husband's whereabouts, but said she has spoken with him at least twice a week since he left.
In their phone conversations, she said, Andrey Vusik has repeatedly expressed his condolences to Singh's family. She said he is having a difficult time grasping the gravity of the crime.
"We just got in the confrontation between the churches and the gay community; what happened was a tragic accident, and had nothing to do with gays," she said through a translator.
After Tuesday's press conference, community activists gathered at sheriff's headquarters to express gratitude.
"This is very significant -- we're moving forward," said Georgette Imura, a leader in the Asian/Pacific Islander community and chair of the Satender Justice Coalition. "I'm very excited that the suspects have been identified and that they have been charged with hate crimes."
Sacramento's gay and lesbian community was particularly shocked at Singh's death, fearing that it represented an escalation in the rift between them and Slavic evangelical leaders who preach that homosexuality is a sin.
Sgt. Merkins said Tuesday that she could provide no information about the church affiliations of Vusik or Shevchenko.
Satender Singh
Beating death symbolic of local tensions
Sacramento Bee
Original Article
By Crystal Carreon - Bee Staff Writer
Published Friday Jul 13 2007
Today, those who knew Satender Singh will gather at a Sacramento mortuary to mourn a young man whose life ended too soon, in a flash of violence his friends say was fueled by bigotry and fear.
They will come together to remember the 26-year-old, a Fijian immigrant, as meticulously dressed, always sharing a smile and a loud, melodic laugh that infused a room with joy.
Many who didn't know Singh will be there as well. In death, he has emerged as a symbol of wounds that have festered for some time between Sacramento's gay community and members of the Slavic evangelical community, a thousands-strong group that has become a vocal force denouncing gay rights. It is that rhetoric, some contend, that fueled the attack on Singh earlier this month at Lake Natoma.
"This homicide sort of brings to light what has been feared," said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, who attended a vigil for Singh last week. "It's tragic evidence of a larger point."
The circumstances surrounding the July 1 beating remain under investigation, but Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness said this week "there is a strong probability" the assault was a hate crime. He characterized the case as high priority, and said detectives still want to speak with those involved and find the person responsible. As of Thursday, no arrests had been made.
Singh was picnicking near Lake Natoma with a small group of Fijian and Indian friends when the attack occurred, according to two people with him that day. The Bee is not identifying the friends because they fear retribution.
Singh was at the park that Sunday to celebrate a promotion he had earned at his call center job, according to the friends, and the group was drinking and dancing to Indian music. Singh was the only one without a date, and was hugging and dancing with other men.
In the hours preceding the attack, a group described as Russian-speaking hurled explicit gay slurs and racial remarks at Singh and his party, according to witnesses and sheriff's officials. When Singh and his friends tried to leave around 8 p.m., they were confronted by the Slavic group and a fight ensued, the witnesses said.
Singh was punched -- once -- in the face. He fell backward and cracked his head, rupturing a part of the brain stem that controls most of life's functions. He died four days later.
Singh's death has struck a deep chord in Sacramento's gay community, whose members have expressed concern in the past year over aggressive anti-gay protests Slavic evangelical Christians have staged at area schools and the Capitol.
"We could read the writing on the wall," said Nathan Feldman of Sacramento's "Being Gay Today" cable-access show. "This was not a random thing; this has been building up."
For the past year, Feldman said, he has documented the growing volatility around the protests, and was moved to stage a counter-protest last July at Bethany Slavic Missionary Church, the region's largest evangelical congregation.
The Sacramento area is home to about 100,000 Russian-speaking residents, community leaders say. About a third of those residents are evangelical Christians who espouse a literal interpretation of the Bible. Those leading the anti-gay protests -- many of whom fled religious persecution in the former Soviet Union -- maintain they're exercising their newfound freedom of speech to spread the message that homosexuality is a sin.
"What's going on is very complicated," Feldman said this week. "It's almost a social war starting in Sacramento."
Steinberg, who last year rode as a dignitary in the city's annual gay pride parade, said he has been struck by the magnitude of vitriol emanating from the evangelical protests.
"Some of the epithets, some of the signs are not only disrespectful of the gay and lesbian community, but they are disrespectful of the entire community," he said. "The words are vile ... and words may give people the implicit license to take the next step and hurt people."
Though sheriff's investigators have yet to identify Singh's attackers, leaders in the area's gay and Asian Pacific Islander communities have united behind the belief he was a victim of a hate crime and are responding in force.
Last week, the groups held vigils in his honor, and this week local leaders formed the Satender Justice Coalition, a task force that plans to host forums and letter-writing campaigns to call attention to acts of prejudice and bigotry.
"Why has Mr. Singh's death galvanized this community?" asked Georgette Imura of the Council of Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy. "He was targeted because of his ethnicity and his perceived sexual orientation ... and possibly, his racial background. It's touched us on so many different levels."
Florin Ciuriuc, a former executive director of the Slavic Community Center of Sacramento, said he was disturbed but not surprised to hear of the attack at Lake Natoma.
Ciuriuc said he was among those leading anti-gay protests a few years back but that he stopped participating as the movement became more menacing.
"I saw that people were hungry for violence, for blood; different ideas where we have to be aggressive, where we have to scream," he said. "I don't want people from my community killing each other or other people because they are getting aggressive."
Viktor Chernyetsky, administrator of Bethany Slavic Missionary Church, strongly disagreed with Ciuriuc's assessment. Chernyetsky said Slavic leaders teach homosexuality is a sin, but do not support physical violence.
"You can express your view legally. You can go to the Capitol. You can put up signs," Chernyetsky said. "But to resort to physical violence, we are strongly against this."
He said the community will continue to fight against gay rights because that is their moral duty.
"We see danger that comes from the gay community, in Sacramento especially," said Chernyetsky. "This issue is so important for our families and for our kids, and by the way, for the future for our country.
"So probably," he said, "we need to be more vocal."
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