Thanks in part to a Brooklyn cabby who jotted down a plate number on a napkin, cops tracked down two “gutless” thugs suspected of the hate slaying of an Ecuadorian man mistaken as gay as he walked arm-in-arm with his brother, authorities said.
Hakim Scott, 25, of The Bronx, was arrested on hate-crime murder charges yesterday, and a manhunt is under way for Keith Phoenix, 28, in the Dec. 7 bottle and bat attack on José Sucuzhanay, 31, in Bushwick.
“In this city, there’s no such thing as a second-class citizen,” Mayor Bloomberg said last night.
He had called the horrific attack “a pointless and gutless crime.”
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Scott claimed news accounts of the attack on Sucuzhanay and brother Romel “troubled” him and “he was glad he finally got it off his chest.”
“The cretins charged with the attack mistook them as gay people,” Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes said.
The brothers were huddled against the cold.
Kelly said some 30 detectives worked on the case, and got their break from witnesses – including the cabby who took down the SUV plate that led cops to Phoenix’s girlfriend.
Then “detectives obtained [a tollbooth-surveillance] photograph of the suspect and were able to document the fact he crossed the Triborough Bridge 19 minutes after the attack,” Kelly said.
Additional reporting by John Doyle