Unfinished Lives

Queens Gay Bashers Indicted for Hate Crimes

Defendant Daniel Rodriguez

Queens, NY – Both men charged with the savage assault that left gay New Yorker Jack Price near death in mid-October have been indicted for 14 counts of assault and robbery as a hate crime, as well as possession of stolen property.  Daniel Rodriguez, 21, and Daniel Aleman, 26, both from College Point, Queens, allegedly attacked Jack Price, 49, early in the morning on October 8. The assault, sudden and brutal, lasted for roughly three minutes.  A surveillance camera caught the bashing on tape, a damning piece of evidence the defense will have a hard time explaining away.  According to Gay City News, if convicted, each defendant could receive up to 25 years in prison, with the stipulation that neither of them could be released before 21 years of the sentence had been served.  Police investigators said that the bashing took place 4:30 a.m. on October 8 as Price was leaving a local 24-hour delicatessen.  Rodriguez and Aleman allegedly accosted Price in the deli as he was buying a pack of cigarettes, and then followed him outside to press their attack.  During the beating, Rodriguez allegedly yelled at Price repeatedly, calling him a “faggot.”  After rifling through his pockets, the pair shown on camera left the scene.  Price, before falling into a coma, was able to identify his assailants to police.  Unbeknownst to Rodriguez and Aleman, who allegedly taunted him in Spanish, Price understood the language, and gave details of what he heard to the investigators.  Price lay in the New York Medical Center of Queens for better than three weeks, suffering from a broken jaw, a lacerated spleen, broken ribs, and two collapsed lungs.  Protests against hate violence were organized swiftly, the largest of them comprised of over 500 who demanded justice for Price.  A small contingent of supporters of the defendants staged a counter-protest.  Aleman was arrested in short order in Queens.  Rodriguez fled to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was arrested on October 13.  After his transport back to Queens for arraignment, Rodriguez confessed to NYPD officers that he assaulted Price, and gave the following details of the run-up to the attack, according to WABC News: “According to prosecutors, Rodriguez admitted he and the other suspect Daniel Aleman confronted Price believing he was about to write his phone number on a wall in order to solicit other men. It was that confrontation that led to the beating. Prosecutors also say Rodriguez admitted to yelling anti-gay epithets while beating Price. Rodriguez’s attorney says that his client never confessed and that the NYPD detectives basically put words in his client’s mouth.”  Price counters that he never wrote graffiti on the deli wall, and did nothing to provoke the attack.  Rodriguez’s animus toward Price was clear to investigators who report that Rodriguez admitted to using the anti-gay slurs because “Jack is disgusting.”  Both defendants are being held at Riker’s Island without bail.  Price has substantially recovered from the physical aspects of the beating, but the psychological injuries he sustained will take a lifetime to cope with.  When he woke up from his coma in the hospital, he told relatives that he was “surprised to be alive.”

January 22, 2010 - Posted by unfinishedlives | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Vigils | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, Bludgeoning, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino / Latina Americans, Law and Order, New York, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy