Deanna (Dee), 37, and Cathren (Cat), 30, are recovering from injuries they received from a suspect Shaunda Lane allegedly became upset because she didn’t understand the women’s sign language.
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A woman who attacked a Deaf lesbian couple with a baseball bat was sentenced to five years in state prison. Shaunda Lane, 32, of California City, pled guilty to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
Lane has prior felony convictions for robbery, burglary, theft and check fraud, court records show. A GoFundMe page was set up for the Deaf lesbians HERE.
Colin Flaherty is an award winning writer whose work has been published in more than 1000 places around the globe, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Washington Post, Bloomberg Business Week, Time magazine, and others. He is the author of "White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence and How the Media Ignore It." As a reporter, he won more than 40 journalism awards, including Best Investigative from the Society of Professional Journalists.
VIDEO [CC] - Deaf News: California School for the Deaf, Riverside student killed by gunman after he and friends explain in a text, 'We can't hear you'
LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles Time: The family of a Deaf teen says he was killed Friday night when a gunman approached him and his Deaf friends in Moreno Valley, asked them questions and began shooting as they tried to explain that they couldn’t hear him.
Najai Welch said her brother, DeSean Welch, and his friends were watching a football game at Rancho Verde High School, where the unidentified gunman approached them and began asking questions.
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A friend of the dead teen pulled out a cellphone and showed it to the man in effort to explain that they were Deaf and didn’t understand him.
She said the friend wrote, “We are Deaf. We can’t hear you. We don’t understand what you are saying to us.”
The gunman, she said, took the phone and typed out a message, saying he “bangs in this hood,” and then asked the victim if he knew someone who lived in Ontario.
Her brother and friends then left the football game and entered a minivan, Najai Welch said. The group was being followed as the van drove away, she said.
At 9:56 p.m., deputies received a report of shots fired in the intersection of Via De Anza and Camino San Simeon near the high school, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
When deputies arrived, they found evidence of a shooting but no victims.
At the same time, DeSean Welch’s friends flagged down deputies in the area of Lasselle Street and Iris Avenue, pleading for help because he had been struck by the gunfire.
The 18-year-old Victorville teen was taken to an area hospital, where he later died, deputies said.
Najai Welch thinks the shooting was a case of mistaken identity. She said her brother was never involved in gangs or anything criminal. He was focused on sports and loved basketball, which he hoped to play professionally.
“My brother didn’t deserve that,” she said. “He was a good kid.”
News of the teen’s death left many in the Deaf community stunned.
Memorials for the teen circulated on social media, and at least one team held a moment of silence for him during its game.
The school’s alumni association said its members were mourning the fallen teen’s death.
“We do not support any violence toward anyone regardless of their backgrounds, their actions or their characters,” the group said in a statement. “We believe anything can be resolved or find solutions. Unfortunately it did not happen with DeSean Welch.”
A family member has created a fundraiser to help pay for his funeral expenses.
Najai Welch is hopeful detectives will find the gunman.
VIDEO [CC] - World Federation of the Deaf - A Voice for Deaf Refugees in American Sign Language by Isidore Niyongabo.
This video is about the first initiative to promote proper identification and humanitarian services for Deaf people in refugees camp, particularly those in developing countries.
The purpose of this video if to raise funds for the first phase of this project.
Friends, colleagues and future unknown donnors, could you imagine being a Deaf person in living in refugee or displaced camps or striving through natural disasters or war zone in developing countries? Well, I have lived half my life through and I know first-hand how hard it can be. During my Graduate studies at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, I was given the provileges to explore the current situation faced by other millions of Deaf men, women and children in developing countries.
There are unnacounted millions of Deaf refugees all over the world and currently, the United Nations High Commissariat on Refugees (UNHCR) and almost all international humanitarian organizations do not possess any system or procedures to properly identify refugees who are Deaf and provide them with proper humanitarian services or protections... Read more: http://www.gofundme.com/deaf-refugees
A writer star Colin Flaherty the American Thinker shares the discussion and conversation questions on Black people violence against Deaf people.
