We've been burning the midnight oil in our Oakland editing room to bring you preview scenes from our next PBS film, NIOT III: The Patchogue Story.
It's the story of a small Long Island community where Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was murdered in November 2008 in an attack by seven high school students who were looking for "Mexicans" to beat up.
NIOT film crews have made more than a dozen visits to Patchogue. We've gotten to know the Lucero family as well as civic leaders and elected officials, who tried to bring the community together in the aftermath of this shocking hate crime.
Why did we choose this story as our film's centerpiece?