Details Emerge in NYC Gang Gay Bash

Last fall when a New York gang called the Latin King Goonies attacked and sodomized a male teen, the nation was shocked. Now, new details have emerged in the case.

Seven members of the Bronx gang are now on trial for last fall's attacks, in which two other victims were also targeted.

The Associated Press summarized the spree in an Oct. 11, 2010 article that detailed how the gang began to suspect that one of their newer members might be gay. To extract a confession of gay sex from him, members of the gang stripped his clothes off, beat him, and sodomized him with a wooden handle.

A second young gang member who was also suspected of being gay was subjected to similar assault, the AP article said.

When the first youth told the gang that he had had sexual relations with a 30-year-old man, the gang targeted the older man also, subjecting him to torture by beating and burning him. The gang also sodomized the older man, using a miniature baseball bat. One gang member taunted the man as the sexual assault took place, telling him, "You like that."

Gang members who went to his home also assaulted the older man's brother. The brother was beaten and bound, and the home robbed.

Seven members of the gang are now on trial for the spree of anti-gay violence. Records assembled by the prosecution show that the gang not only beat, tortured, and sexually assaulted the 30-year-old man; they also attempted to blackmail him for $2,000. The records indicate that the beating and sexual assault took place only after the man failed to pay, the New York Daily News reported on April 27.

The article said that Idelfonso Mendez--who is the purported head of the gang--told the police that the older man "looked like he liked" the sexual assault, according to the court records.

The older man's cousin told the press that the court records made it clear "what scum these guys really are. They are just animals. Even if he'd given them money, they would have done this."

The article identified the other accused gang members as David Rivera, Nelson Falu, Jose Dominguez, Elmer Confresi, Rudy Vargas, and Luis Garcia.

A number of anti-gay assaults have taken place in New York recently. A Brooklyn man named Barie Shortell was attacked by a group of men last month and beaten so severely that he needed $100,000 worth of surgery to repair the damage--a sum well beyond his means to pay, since he is without insurance.

A similarly vicious attack took the life of straight New York teenager Anthony Collao, who was reportedly mistaken for gay by a gang that crashed a party in Queens on March 12.

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.