A young college student in a major American city is struck by a car and dies while fleeing a mob shouting racial slurs. Sounds like it should be a big story, with national coverage, doesn't it.

Not in this case.

A 20-year-old college student who was struck and killed by a car last week in Harlem was chased into a busy road while fleeing a group of young men during what may have been a bias attack, the authorities said yesterday.

The death of the student, Broderick Hehman of Manhattan, a junior at New York University, was ruled a homicide by the city medical examiner, who found that while the direct cause was head trauma, Mr. Hehman had been fleeing assailants when he was struck, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner said yesterday.

On April 1, Mr. Hehman darted into the intersection at 125th Street and Park Avenue, where he was hit by a silver Mercedes-Benz, the police said. A witness, a homeless man named David Jones who sells used goods at the intersection, said that just before the collision, he saw a group of men trying to attack the student. Mr. Hehman died on Tuesday.

So what we have here is a pack of jackals preying on a lone individual, which results in his death. what do the police think happened?

Investigators have two theories concerning the killing, a law enforcement official said yesterday: that about eight young men, some of them teenagers, were trying to rob Mr. Hehman; or that the group, at least one among them using a racial epithet, singled him out because he was white.

Oh, he was white. No need to make this a front page story or highlight the racial angle to the story -- bury the story inside the paper and bury the race of the victim at the end of the story. Don't mention the race of the perpetrators at all. After all, it isn't like this was a gang of white guys chasing a black man into traffic -- that would be news! But the New York Times certainly couldn't present facts that might make some members of a minority community look bad -- that would be a horrid act of racism. Heck, I'm surprised that the paper has not editorialized that Broderick Hehman was guilty of racism for fleeing for his life and getting killed in the process. After all, they are a bunch of head-up-the-butt liberals over there.

Fortunately, the New York Post has the decency to pursue the story a little further (link courtesy of Modern Tribalist).

The NYPD hate-crimes unit is probing a report that a white NYU student killed by a car in Harlem was fleeing a gang of black teenagers screaming "Get whitey!" sources said yesterday.

* * *

The sources said Hehman might have been targeted as a soft mark for robbers after the teenage gang spotted the caring urban-studies major handing pocket change to a wheelchair- bound man near the corner of 125th Street and Park Avenue Saturday night.

The gang of youths, some of them as young as 11, had been smoking pot inside a nearby Popeye's fast-food eatery at 8:30 p.m. when they spotted Hehman walking by and then stopping to help the handicapped man.

An anonymous caller later tipped the CrimeStoppers hot line that a group of youths screamed, "Get Whitey!" and ran toward him.

Witnesses said Hehman fled into traffic against the light and was hit by a Mercedes-Benz traveling east on 125th Street.

This case does, as is pointed out elsewhere int he article, have an eerie symetry with the 1986 Howard Beach case, in which a black man was killed when pursued into traffic by a racial slur shouting teen. Interestingly enough, the New York Times covered that case extensively and ont he front page, clearly and prominently noting the race of both the victim and attackers.

But then again, that story fit the MSM frame of reference that prevails at the Times and among other major media outlets. This one does not.

UPDATE -- 4/9/06: Michelle Malkin has picked up on this story this afternoon. She adds a couple of imporant details.

First, arrests have been made.

Police said they arrested four teenage boys on Saturday night in the death of a college student who was struck by a car in Harlem earlier this month.

Authorities said they believe the suspects chased the victim, John Broderick Hehman, 20, into the busy street.

Hehman was struck by a silver Mercedes on East 125th Street near Park Avenue on April 1. He died three days later.

Hassan Mayfield and Andre Johnson, both 15, face second-degree murder and attempted robbery charges. Charges are still pending against the two other suspects, who police said are 13 years old.

Because the suspects are black and the victim was white, some activists are pushing police to pursue the case as a hate crime.

"If the reports are accurate, then one of the people in the group said: 'Get the white boy.' That's a hate crime," said Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney.

Will the authorities have the integrity -- and the testicular fortitude -- to apply the law in an even-handed way, charging these killers witha hate crime? And will they take the appropriate stepps to have the two younger kids animals charged and tried as adults?

Second, the New York Post has picked up on issue of the silence of the MSM and the racial activists like Al Sharpton on what at first glance appears to be a racial killing that parallels one of New Yorks most celebrated -- and horrific -- cases of white on black violence.

Despite its eerie resemblance to the 1986 Howard Beach affair, this incident has all but passed unnoticed.

Back in '86, a gang of white thugs chased Michael Griffith, a black man, onto the busy Belt Parkway - where he, too, was killed by a car. The outrageous act inflamed racial passions across the city.

Last year, when another black man was beaten by several white thugs from Howard Beach, the city again took notice.

Al Sharpton & Co. saw to that.

So, Howard Beach, big headlines.

Harlem, hardly any headlines at all.

Could it be because this time the gang was black and the victim white?

Obviously, the police have to take their time as they make their case, but the silence in the media - relative to the other two cases - is stunning.

Eyewitness accounts say Hehman had stopped to give a homeless man a dollar. One thug allegedly approached, asking, "Where's our dollar?"

Another yelled, "Get the white boy!" or "Get whitey!" The gang chased him.

* * *

Meanwhile, while we have never particularly cared for the concept of "hate" crimes, the fact is that the statutes must be enforced as written.

A little public protest from Al Sharpton and his merry pranksters would go a long way toward making their reflexive "outrage" when the shoe is on the other foot a bit more credible.

Even if they don't really mean it.

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