Who is that Anthony kid the protestors have? Is he some illegal who died on the Mexican Border?
Who is that Anthony kid the protestors have? Is he some illegal who died on the Mexican Border?
IMMIGRATION MARCHES
Student’s suicide blamed on threat of jail for protest
Saturday, April 15, 2006
ONTARIO, Calif. — Hours after eighth-grader Anthony Soltero was called to the viceprincipal’s office, he took his stepfather’s rifle and killed himself.
Now, Anthony is being portrayed as a martyr in the immigration debate.
The boy’s family says he killed himself because he had been threatened with jail for walking out of school to protest proposed changes to immigration law.
But school officials deny that he took part in the protests and deny that he was threatened with anything more than missing a dance or field trip. They say he simply cut class.
Anthony, 14, ducked out of DeAnza Middle School on March 28, the same day thousands of other students across Southern California took part in walkouts and protest marches. He killed himself at home two days later, leaving a suicide note in which he blamed the run-in with the vice principal, a family attorney said. The attorney would not release the note.
The boy’s mother, Louise Corales, said that over her objections, her son protested against federal legislation that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally and would hasten construction of a wall along the Mexican border. The boy and his mother were born in the U.S., the family’s attorneys said.
"He was just fighting for his rights," Corales said. "He would be proud that we are here now to honor him because he is a hero."
A student march planned for today in Los Angeles will be dedicated to the boy.
On the Internet, several blogs have portrayed Anthony as a martyr — the word used by one civil-rights activist aligned with his family. The headline on one posting declared his suicide the "First Death From Walkouts."
Officials of the Ontario-Montclair School District, about 45 miles east of Los Angeles, expressed sympathy for Anthony’s family but defended the vice principal.
The school district said four students left school March 28. Superintendent Sharon McGehee has said that interviews with students and faculty members show that the boy and other students never marched with protesters. She said the students went to a store, then returned to the school for lunch.
Two days later, the vice principal told Anthony and three others that for their truancy they could choose to miss a field trip or a year-end dance, McGehee said.
That was not what Anthony told his mother by phone moments before shooting himself, nor what he wrote in a suicide note, family attorneys said.
Attorney Samuel Paz said interviews with the other students support the mother’s recollection: that Anthony was told he could be jailed for three years and his parents could be fined.
In his suicide note, the boy named the vice principal and "expresses his fear and worry about what would happen to him," Paz said.
http://www.dispatch.com/national-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/04/15/20060415-A9-02.html