The fatal shooting of a Phoenix resident becomes a hate-crime case even as police and activists downplay the incident's racial overtones.
Los Angeles Times: Had Arizona's governor not just signed the toughest law against illegal immigrants in the nation, the killing of Juan Varela probably would have been written off as just a tragic neighborhood dispute. The 44-year-old U.S. citizen was watering chile plants in his front yard when a neighbor confronted him and shot him to death, according to police documents. Varela's brother, Antonio, told police that the neighbor, Gary Kelley, who is white, called Juan Varela by an ethnic slur and said he had to "go back to Mexico" now that Gov. Jan Brewer had signed SB 1070. The family campaigned to publicize the death, culminating with the county prosecutor's decision last month to add a hate-crime allegation to the second-degree murder charges filed against Kelley. But Kelley's Latino tenant and neighbors say he displayed no racial animus and had criticized the new law as unfair. Most immigrant rights activists have shied away from the case, skeptical that the killing was racially motivated. To some Arizonans, it's an illustration of how incidents in the state now get interpreted through the prism of the new law.
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