Pa. teens say they covered up assault on immigrant

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SCRANTON, Pa. — After beating and kicking an illegal Mexican immigrant and leaving him for dead in the street, a group of white teens in a small Pennsylvania mining town knew they had a serious problem on their hands.

So, witnesses said, they decided on a cover story to tell the police: They weren't drinking. They didn't utter ethnic slurs. And, above all, Brandon Piekarsky did not kick Luis Ramirez in the head as he lay unconscious in the street.

At the federal trial of Piekarsky and a co-defendant, witnesses described a plot Thursday that prosecutors say was designed to minimize the teens' involvement in the fatal attack in Shenandoah, a town riven by ethnic tensions between whites and a burgeoning Hispanic population.....