Gay Man Is Victimized Twice, By His Killer And The State of Maryland!
Glen H. Footman would appear to be the perfect candidate to get a check from Maryland's Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.
He was shot in September 2008 while walking hand-in-hand with his longtime partner, Alex Chavarria, on Howard Street in Mount Vernon. Witnesses told police that a young man, previously overheard saying, "I'm going to kill myself a gay tonight," stopped to ask Footman a question or bum a cigarette, and then shot him twice.
Baltimore police classified the shooting as a possible hate crime but have not made any arrests. Footman spent months at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, then at a rehabilitation center, then at home. In July, he returned to Shock Trauma for more surgery, and he died Nov. 9.
Glen H. Footman, a true victim if there ever was one in Baltimore, died too soon to get any money from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.
A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which oversees the panel, told me an investigator had put the application on the docket in early November, but the board wasn't due to vote until a week after Footman died.
And because Footman, 52, had no spouse and no dependents, there is no one for the state to give the money to.
Footman and Chavarria, together for 13 years, could not marry in Maryland. And had they been legally wed in one of the few states that recognizes gay marriage, it is unclear whether Chavarria could receive compensation here. Maryland's attorney general is working on an opinion as to whether this state would recognize unions that are legal elsewhere.
But even that indignity isn't what has Chavarria, who has moved back to his home state of Texas, so upset.
He is angrier with what he calls bureaucratic fumbling by the board, which he says repeatedly delayed dealing with the case because of lost faxes, missed information and poor record-keeping. He said one clerk told him she had misplaced his file and that it had to be redone and resubmitted.
"I am upset and disappointed that this program never helped us and is not organized to work, even for those who do it right from the start," Chavarria said in an e-mail. "Why does the board not recognize that the victims include the family and/or caregivers who are truly the ones supporting everything financially?"
Footman spent five months at Shock Trauma, then a month at Kernan Hospital rehabilitation center and then went home. The couple had to move to a place that made it easier for him to recover. While home, he meticulously filled out paperwork for the state compensation board.
Footman could have asked for up to $45,000, but he wanted just $12,000, what he could document and what his insurance company wouldn't pay. He couldn't claim lost wages because he had not yet started at the insurance company and was technically unemployed.
On his application, under "Brief description of crime," he wrote: "Two gunshot wounds as a result of a hate crime. Critical condition." He sought money for such expenses as hospital parking, $293; prescription medication: $69.75; a copy of a cardiologist report: $45.
Chavarria complains that 180 days is too long to take to process claims. The state says it needs six months to figure out who is entitled to money and who isn't. It's a shame that Footman didn't get the money, and even more of a shame if he died faster than a bureaucracy could churn.
And it's even more troubling that his union with Chavarria can't be recognized; had he been legally married, his death wouldn't be an issue as far as the money is concerned. The state simply would write the check to Chavarria.
Chavarria told me he and his partner did everything right, filled out every form, provided all the paperwork and proof, and deserve better than to be rejected because the state ran out of time. The bills fell to him and to Footman's parents in Maine, and that this was Footman's way of trying to pay them back, even if it was just a token.
Said Chavarria: "He died feeling useless because he couldn't help."
Criminal compensation fund in Maryland
Who can recover: •An innocent victim of a crime who has suffered a physical injury (includes sexual assault and child abuse) and has at least $100 in nonreimbursable expenses or has lost at least two straight weeks of work.
•A surviving spouse or child of a homicide victim.
•A person who is dependent on support provided by a homicide victim.
•A victim (or the surviving family) of an international terrorist attack.
•A victim (or the surviving family) of a hit-and-run, drunk driver or a driver intentionally using a vehicle as a weapon.
•A person who is killed or injured while trying to prevent a crime (includes the surviving family).
•A person who is killed or injured while giving aid to a law enforcement officer performing his official duties (also applies to a person giving aid to a firefighter being obstructed in the performance of his official duties).
•A person who paid or assumed responsibility for the funeral expenses of a homicide victim.
Source: Maryland Criminal Injuries Compensation Board
Story From: The Baltimore Sun
A Vancouver, Canada man who pleaded guilty to gay-bashing has been sentenced to 17 months in jail for what a British Columbia Supreme Court judge deemed a hate crime.
Michael Kandola lashed out at Jordan Smith, who was holding hands with another man as they walked on a downtown Vancouver street in September 2008.
Smith, then 27, suffered jaw fractures. The victim and witnesses said Kandola, then 20, uttered a string of homophobic slurs during the attack.
Smith had to have surgery and his jaw was wired shut for six weeks after the attack.
Calling Kandola's actions vicious, unprovoked and cowardly, B.C. Supreme Court Judge Joel Groves said hatred of Smith's sexual orientation was a motivating factor in the attack, and for that reason, he was meting out a harsher penalty.
Kandola was originally charged with assault, but the Crown soon changed the charge to aggravated assault causing bodily harm.
Graves said Kandola will get credit for the five months he already spent in jail, meaning he will spend 12 more months behind bars if he serves the full sentence.
CBCNews.ca Reporting
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Clattenburg, 24, was shot Feb. 21 inside his mother's apartment in the 1400 block of West Bitters Road.
Cody Carmichael (pictured below last) was charged with murder Monday after he confessed to detectives that he shot Clattenburg because the victim made sexual advances toward him, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Carmichael, 21, remained in Bexar County Jail on Tuesday under $100,000 bail.
The affidavit states police traced the victim's last phone calls to a man who told detectives he gave Carmichael the handgun used to kill Clattenburg.
Carmichael allegedly told police the sexual advances occurred when the man who supplied the handgun was with them at Clattenburg's apartment. After taking the man home, Carmichael returned to the North Side apartment and killed Clattenburg, the affidavit states.
No charges have been filed against the man who provided the handgun.
Clattenburg's sister Ginger, who asked to be identified by first name only, said her brother had been in Carmichael's presence once or twice before.
She said her brother was warming a plate of meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and green beans when he answered the apartment door.
“It was like someone came to the door unexpectedly,” she said. “His food was still in the microwave. This was truly life interrupted.”
Ruth Clattenburg, the victim's mother, said: “When Troy answered that door, he never dreamed this man would have done that.”
She said the men her son was with that night “must have known” about his sexual orientation.
“He didn't deserve this,” she said, wondering if Carmichael was aware she was asleep in the apartment when her son was killed.
She said she heard what sounded like a gunshot around 2 a.m. Feb. 21, but she didn't think anything of it until she woke up to take her dachshund, Bailey, for a walk around 7:15 a.m.
She said she saw her son's body propped up against a dryer in the hallway between his bedroom and bathroom. A single .380-caliber shell casing was found near the front door, beneath a poster of the Ten Commandments. There were no signs of forced entry, police said.
“I said, ‘Troy, what are you doing on the floor?' and then I felt that he was cold,” she said. “I went into shock, and my heart is broken into a million pieces.”
A spiritual man, Troy Martinez Clattenburg was small-framed and gentle, his sister said.
“We're not buying that he was sexually aggressive,” she said. “Anyone who would do this to Troy would do this to a small child. I definitely think this was a hate crime.”
The victim's father, Martinez, would not discuss his son's death Tuesday.
A federal prosecutor on Puerto Rico said earlier today her office would file hate crime charges against the man who reportedly confessed to killing gay teenager Jorge Steven López Mercado if local authorities do not.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Pedro Julio Serrano contradicted the implications in the confessed murderer’s account. "None of Jorge Steven’s friends, and I’ve spoken to many of them, knew anything about his ever having engaged in sex work, not his family, and not the police," Serrano, who met with investigators on the case, told this reporter. "Nor was he known as a cross-dresser. He identified and lived as a very proud gay man, he was very genuine and authentic. He was just very fashion-oriented and what you could call a gender-bender, but not in a transgendered way." Serrano added, "We do not know if the murderer’s claim that Jorge Steven was wearing a dress is true or not, because the body had been so dismembered, its legs and arms and torso strewn in different locations, and it had also been burned along with the clothes he was wearing."
