Bias Bash Suspect: I Did It, But I'm Gay Too!

A suspect in a brutal Greenwich Village beating that targeted a young gay man says that he hit the victim--but denies that it was out of anti-gay bias, claiming that he, like the victim, is gay.

Damian Furtch, 26, was attacked outside of the Greenwich Village McDonald's where he works by two men who followed him outside from the restaurant. An April 2 New York Daily News article says that the men taunted Furtch about his clothing.

According to an Anti-Violence Project alert circulated in the wake of the March 27 attack, Furtch had left the restaurant seeking to avoid trouble. The two men followed him onto the street and attacked, leaving him with facial contusions and a black eye. According to Furtch, the men screamed anti-gay insults at him. The assault was captured on security video.

The New York Daily News reported that police arrested one suspect in connection with the attack, a homeless man named Anthony Bray. The 21-year-old Bray says that he assaulted Furtch, but not out of antipathy toward gays, since--Bray says--he himself is gay. The New York Daily News cited a source who said that Bray attacked Furtch for being "disrespectful."

To Furtch, that did not change the tenor of the attack.

"The fact that the attacker in custody alleges he is gay does not change the fact that he shouted anti-gay slurs while attacking me," a statement issued by Furtch read in part. "I look forward to the criminal trial where all of the accurate details will come out."

Furtch, who has been given media training by GLAAD, told the GLBT advocacy group in an interview that the attack had been "a traumatic experience for me, my friends and my family." Furtch said that he had attempted to avoid trouble with the men, but that they had pursued him. As Furtch told the story to GLAAD, the attack was preceded by nothing more than the men "staring" at him and a friend as they ordered food from the restaurant.

"My friend and I were at the local McDonalds ordering food when I noticed two men staring at us," Furtch told GLAAD. "My friend and I ordered our food and waited for our order to be filled. I stepped outside to make a phone call in an effort to avoid the tension in the restaurant and remove myself from the situation.

"The two gentlemen stepped out after me and asked if I had a problem," Furtch continued. "I told one of them that I had stepped out just to use the phone and had no problem with him or his three friends. Then, all of a sudden the second gentleman hit me on the right side of my face causing me to stumble. Then I felt three punches to the face."

Furtch said that the attack was "part of the larger issue of violence against gay and transgender people in New York City."

Indeed, the attack Furtch suffered was only one more in a string of assaults targeting gays or heterosexuals mistaken for gay by their attackers. In several instances, a common theme emerged: The victims sought to avoid trouble, only for the perpetrators to pursue and attack them.

Pursuit and Assault

Barie Shortell of Brooklyn needed 10 hours' worth of surgical attention--at a cost of over $100,000, which Shortell cannot pay since he has no insurance coverage--following a brutal bashing last Feb. 22 in Brooklyn's gayborhood of Williamsburg.

According to a March 17 account in local publication the Brooklyn Paper, Shortell was about a block away from his home when he approached a gang of six teens. The youths shouted anti-gay taunts at him, and Shortell went out of his way to avoid trouble, crossing the street. But the youths came after him, threw him against the side of building, and launched into an assault so vicious that one surgeon compared the damage Shortell suffered to the aftermath of a car crash.

Surgeons put three metal plates on Shortell's skull, the article said, and tended to his broken jaw. Shortell's eye sockets were shattered and his nose broken.

"I feel pretty confident they perceived me as a gay man and attacked me, but I can't understand why they did what they did," Shortell said. "I looked horrible. Blood was everywhere."

The AVP alert issued after the assault targeting Furtch recalled the assault against Shortell and also recounted, "On February 26, Staten Island resident Ronald Jones beat and choked his friend, Robert Jenkins, to death. Jones has told police that he was driven into a murderous rage by Jenkins' unwanted sexual advances."

In another incident of bias-driven assault, a gang of youths crashed a party being hosted by a gay man in Queens on March 12 and targeted a straight teenager for violence--with deadly results.

Four young men invaded a party attended by 18-year-old Anthony Collao. Though two gay men hosted the party, Collao himself was heterosexual. The invaders reportedly broke windows, scrawled on the walls with red markers, and made hand gestures associated with gangs. The men also reportedly attacked and beat Collao while hurling anti-gay epithets, media accounts said.

Collao reportedly tried to avoid violence by leaving the party, but the gang chased him down, threw him up against a car, and pummeled him mercilessly. Collao was reportedly punched, kicked, and stomped, and beaten with a pipe.

Four suspects were later placed under arrest. One of the young men was wearing Collao's baseball cap, and the other three were drenched with blood. One suspect, Alex Velez, is 16, and lives in the Bronx; the other three, identified as Christopher Lozada, Nolis Ogando, and Luis Tabales, are from Queens and are 17 years old.

Collao was on life support until March 14, when he died in the hospital. The young man's parents operate an ice cream establishment in Queens, though the family lives on Long Island. A neighbor said that Collao was "a very respectful, very friendly, very handsome young man."

The attacks on Collao, Shortell, and Furch are far from isolated instances of anti-gay violence. Several apparently bias-driven attacks have taken place in Queens recently. Last December, two young men pled guilty to an attack on a gay man whom he and another suspect robbed and beat in 2009 outside of a deli.

Daniel Aleman, 27, and Daniel Rodriguez, 22, carried out the assault on 50-year-old Jack Price early in the morning on Oct. 8, 2009. The attackers shouted anti-gay epithets as they punched and kicked Price, delivering a beating so severe that the older man spent weeks in the hospital with serious injuries, including a broken jaw, a punctured lung, and a lacerated spleen. The two attackers also stole Price's wallet. Aleman addressed the court at his Dec. 13, 2009 sentencing, saying that he was drunk at the time of the attack and robbery.

"I'm very sorry for what I did," said Aleman, who had pleaded guilty to charges of robbery as a hate crime, and received the sentence of eight years plus five years of supervision after his prison term on Dec. 13. "I was drunk and I was under the influence," Aleman added. "I made a very big mistake."

Rodriguez similarly pleaded guilty

Perhaps the most infamous hate crime remains the murder of heterosexual Ecuadorean immigrant Jos� Sucuzha�ay, who was walking home from a church party on a bitter cold night with his brother. The two were huddled together for warmth as they walked; they were mistaken for a gay couple and attacked by two men, one of whom beat Sucuzha�ay to death with a baseball bat.

A week after the beating Furtch suffered, another gay man was attacked in New York's Meatpacking District. The 27-year-old unidentified victim in the April 4 attack was not certain whether he was targeted out of bias or not, since he had been wearing headphones and did not hear whether any anti-gay slurs were uttered in the course of the assault.

The second assailant in the Furtch case is still at large and wanted by police.

Bray turned himself in after learning that he had been identified as a suspect in the attack. Bray has a record of prior drug- and robbery-related convictions. Currently, he faces misdemeanor assault charges, but has not been hit with a hate crimes charge.

JoeMyGod reported in an April 2 post that Bray and the second suspect had harassed Furtch over his McDonald's uniform, which included a pink shirt. The posting also said that although a hate crimes charge has not yet been filed, that remained a possibility.