Student Mourned as Possible Hate Victim

A 20-year-old college student shot through the head while sitting in a car at a stoplight was eulogized here Thursday as both a “bright and gentle spirit” and a random victim of what civil rights leaders fear may be another vicious hate crime.

Jody-Gaye Bailey was slain Feb. 24 in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Oakland Park, police said, apparently for no other reason than she was black. She had immigrated here with her family from Jamaica 10 years ago.

As Bailey sat in the front passenger seat of a car being driven by her white boyfriend, police said, a motorist pulled up alongside and fired seven times. Bailey was struck once in the temple. The boyfriend was not injured.

“Sometimes, things just don’t make sense,” the Rev. Moses C. Foo told more than 400 mourners during a tearful memorial service in a small north Miami church. “Sometimes, when we ask, ‘Why? Why Jody?’ there are no answers.”

Arrested Tuesday in connection with Bailey’s death was a self-proclaimed skinhead who minutes before the shooting reportedly boasted of wanting to “go out and kill a nigger,” investigators said.

Robert Boltuch, a 23-year-old restaurant cook, is charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, Oakland Park Police Sgt. Dan Cucchi said. He is being held without bond in the Broward County Jail.

“My community is outraged by this terrible tragedy,” Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) wrote in requesting that Florida Atty. Gen. Bob Butterworth investigate the killing as a possible hate crime.

“There’s a tremendous amount of intolerance out there,” said Joe Roy, who tracks hate crimes for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Only a few make national headlines, but we get 600 to 800 reports a week of everything from cross-burnings to murder.”

“South Florida is a very multicultural area, with minorities working and living together,” Cucchi said. “This has shocked a lot of people.”

Cucchi said Bailey’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Christian Martin, had tentatively identified the heavily tattooed Boltuch as the gunman. A 9-millimeter bullet casing found on the lawn in front of Boltuch’s home also matches casings found at the crime scene, police said.

The FBI has been brought in to help with the investigation, Cucchi said, while the Broward state attorney’s office weighs charging Boltuch under Florida’s hate crime statute, considered the toughest in the nation.

Passed in 1989, it provides for increased penalties for those convicted of crimes motivated by race, religion, national origin or color. Amendments to the law added sexual orientation, disability and age to the list of aggravating factors. The act also permits the victim’s family to sue in civil court for triple damages.

“If convicted under this law, you will be hammered,” said Art Teitelbaum, southern area director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, who helped write the statute. “This is a message to bigots.”

On the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University, where Bailey was a health administration major, students also held a memorial service Thursday. “It sickens us. We want people to know this won’t be tolerated,” student Suzanne Watson said.

Among those who spoke through sobs of grief at Sunny Isles Christian Church were Bailey’s father, Patrick; her two brothers, Nicholas and Mahlon; Martin; college officials; and a representative of the Jamaican Consulate. From her Bible, Foo read one of several notes Bailey had written, including: “You can kill my body, but you can’t kill my soul.” Her parents were taking her body to Jamaica today for burial.

Police on Tuesday removed several boxes of materials, including a computer hard drive, from the up-scale neighborhood home where Boltuch lived with his parents.

Cucchi said that Boltuch has no felony record and was not known to be a member of any white supremacist groups. But, Cucchi said, the suspect did identify himself as a follower of a group called Sharpskins, or SHARP--Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Along with a SHARP tattoo inside his lower lip, Boltuch has many other tattoos, including words in German, skulls and grim reapers, according to police.

“My client is not a racist, and nothing in the world they can say can change that,” Boltuch’s attorney, Robert E. Gluck, told reporters after meeting with him in jail on Wednesday.

Co-workers at the Pompano Beach restaurant where Boltuch worked described him as quiet and friendly. But hours before Bailey was slain, police said, Boltuch was thrown out of the restaurant after using racial epithets in an argument with four Latinos.

Boltuch and some friends then went to at least two other bars, including one where he fought with another patron, police said. Boltuch and his friends then parted ways, they told police.

Boltuch was identified as a possible suspect by his boss, restaurant manager Everett Henderson, who called police after noting a resemblance between Boltuch and a composite sketch of the suspect. Boltuch also failed to show up for work the day after the shooting, Henderson said.

According to U.S. Justice Department figures, 9,861 bias-motivated criminal incidents were reported to the FBI in 1997, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That number declined from the 10,706 reported in 1996.

But Southern Poverty Law Center experts said the numbers of actual hate crimes are hard to document. In its annual review, the Montgomery, Ala.-based group said that the volume and diverse nature of attacks recorded last year “make it clear that tolerance in this country faces a serious challenge.”

Among the hate crimes that made national headlines recently were the dragging death of James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man from Jasper, Texas, and the fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student in Laramie, Wyo.

John W. King, 24, has been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in Byrd’s killing. In the Shepard case, two men charged with murder are awaiting trial.

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.