James Byrd and Matthew Shepard - tragically linked forever 10 years ago

[Shana A]

James Byrd and Matthew Shepard - tragically linked forever 10 years ago
by: Pam Spaulding
Mon Oct 06, 2008 at 20:15:00 PM EDT

http://pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=A62D7C9A316614D086CFE54EF588E701?diaryId=7399

I give big props for the Dallas Voice for choosing to provide coverage of the 10th  anniversary of two tragic murders -- of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd -- whose lives were snuffed out because of bigotry. The two high-profile killings are featured in the Voice's five-part series on anti-gay hate crimes in Texas, but the race-motivated brutal crime involving Byrd was given equal prominence

[Natasha]

James Byrd and Matthew Shepard - tragically linked forever 10 years ago

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7399
Pam Spaulding
Mon Oct 06, 2008 at 20:15:00 PM EDT

It was ten years ago Monday that openly gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten. He died five days later.
Police ruled it a hate crime, and there was an international outcry, along with calls for tougher laws.

As CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras notes, the beating was so savage that a description of his injuries, even a decade later, is hard to listen fathom.

"His head trauma consisted of a massive blow to the right side of his head," Rulon Stacey of Poudre Valley Hospital told reporters at the time. "It fractured his skull from behind his head in a horizontal fashion to in front of his right ear."