Bat-wielding thug clubs black man
BY KERRY BURKE, TAMER EL-GHOBASHY and ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Glenn Moore, who was beaten with a baseball bat.
A black man was clubbed with a baseball bat in Howard Beach early yesterday by white attackers, fracturing his skull in what authorities called a hate crime, police said.
"This is what you get if you want to rob white boys, n----r!" one of the attackers spewed as Glenn Moore, 22, lay bleeding, the victim's friends told cops, law enforcement sources said.
Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly held a news conference at the 106th Precinct stationhouse in Queens last night after a suspected attacker was arrested.
The brutal beating came nearly 20 years after a black construction worker, Michael Griffith, was run down by a car in the same neighborhood when thugs chased him into traffic - a crime that turned Howard Beach into a byword for racial tensions in New York.
"We will have no tolerance whatsoever for hate crimes against any groups in this city," declared Bloomberg, who said it appeared the attack was "racially motivated."
"We have come a long ways in New York and we are not going to let one incident divide this city," he added.
Bloomberg called the attack "ugly" but "isolated," noting that no other hate crimes had been committed in Howard Beach in the past two years.
Moore, who was taken to Jamaica Hospital in serious condition with a fractured skull, was recovering last night, his mother told the Daily News.
"It doesn't make any sense that something like this continues to happen," the distraught mother, Chandra Eison, said.
"We bleed the same blood. To be attacked for just walking in the neighborhood? ... How can you do that to somebody?"
After initially refusing to cooperate with cops, his two friends admitted they had been in the area to steal a luxury car. But they insisted Moore wasn't in on the plan, police said.
Nicholas Minucci, 19, who was arrested in the brutal attack, also apparently had no idea what Moore's pals had been up to, the sources said.
In a videotaped confession, Minucci told cops he attacked Moore because he believed Moore and his pals had "eyed" a $3,000 chain Minucci had been wearing days earlier at a Cross Bay Blvd. hangout, sources said. But investigators doubted that account, sources said.
Minucci - who was on probation for stabbing a teen in 2002 - told cops he repeatedly hit Moore with a metal bat at 3:30 a.m., but claimed Moore fractured his skull when he tripped while fleeing, the sources said.
Minucci's accomplice ripped Moore's Air Jordan sneakers off his feet during the assault on 79th St. near 159th Ave., the sources said.
Sometime earlier, Moore's friends had allegedly attempted to steal a Chrysler 300 parked outside a house in nearby Lindenwood, police said.
One of the friends told cops they had been promised $6,000 if they swiped the car, but said the threesome took off after a light inside a house came on, the sources said.
As Moore and his friends walked into Howard Beach, a Cadillac Escalade drove up beside them, police said.
Moore and his pals "posted up" - meaning they pretended to be waiting for a bus - and then exchanged "hard stares" with the sport-utility vehicle driver, Kelly said.
The black SUV drove off but returned 15 minutes later, this time with three men inside, and one of them yelled, "Yo! What are you n-----s doing here?" the sources said.
Minucci, known in the neighborhood as Fat Nick, allegedly jumped out with a metal bat. Moore's friends ran off and hid in a marsh near St. Helen's Catholic Church, but he slipped, the sources said.
Minucci allegedly hit Moore with the bat, while another attacker tore an earring out of his ear and stole his sneakers and his bag, which held a pair of shoes and clothes for his 6-month-old daughter, the sources said.
Moore managed to use his cell phone to call his friends, who returned and alerted cops, the sources said.The friends - Richard Pope, 25, and Richard Walker, 20, both of Brooklyn - eventually agreed to help cops, the sources said.
Driving along the Lindenwood and Howard Beach border with NYPD Capt. Michael Osgood, Pope spotted the Escalade. Cops pulled the SUV over, finding a bat, Moore's sneakers and the bag with his baby's clothes, sources said.
Minucci was driving the car, police said. He was charged with first-degree assault as a hate crime, and faces up to 25 years in prison, if convicted.
Police identified one alleged accomplice as Anthony Ench of Howard Beach. Cops were also looking for a third white man, identified only as Frankie.
Although Moore has a past arrest for car theft, his mother insisted he carried a hammer and other tools with him because he planned to hang his Air Jordans on his wall as a decoration.
She said her son, who is unemployed, had served a year in the Army and was on disability.
The beating stunned many in the close-knit Queens neighborhood, which the late mob boss John Gotti called home.
"It wasn't a racial incident," insisted Minucci's cousin Nicholas Bonina, 23. "We have black neighbors. It's not like that anymore."
With Robert F. Moore, Tony Sclafani and Scott Shifrel
Originally published on June 30, 2005
