A black teenager was taken to hospital on life-support systems Thursday after being beaten savagely by a group of bat-wielding white men, apparently because he was talking to a white girl. Alfred Jermaine Ewell, 17, a high school football and track star in this affluent seaside village in Long Island, was beaten unconscious as he talked with a white female classmate early Sunday morning. The men, aged 19 to 21, apparently attacked Ewell because he fraternized with the girl at a graduation party a few hours earlier. They have pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murder.
