The Nation - News from Sept. 4, 1989

None of three witnesses to the racially motivated slaying of a black youth in the mostly white Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, N.Y., pointed out the man prosecutors say did the killing when the chief suspect was placed before them in a police lineup, a broadcast report said. WCBS-TV said three black friends who were with Yusuf Hawkins on the night of Aug. 23, when they were surrounded by a mob of white teen-agers and he was shot to death, failed to point out the suspect, Joseph Fama, when they saw him in the lineup with police officers. Authorities believe that Fama shot the 16-year-old Hawkins when the white youths mistook him for the new boyfriend of a young white woman in the neighborhood. The broadcast said two other whites charged in the case named Fama as the gunman.