Unfinished Lives

Savage Anti-Gay Attack Targets Straight Man in Brooklyn

David Jimenez, a non-gay victim of anti-gay hate, was brutally beaten on September 25 while walking his dogs (Brooklyn Paper image – Stefano Giovannini).

Brooklyn, New York – A straight resident of the Williamsburg section of greater New York City was viciously beaten by a man yelling homophobic slurs, adding to the alarming number of hate crime attacks in the Big Apple.  David Jimenez, 40, who identifies as a heterosexual man, told reporters from the Brooklyn Paper that the assault seemed to come out of nowhere as he walked his two Boston Terriers back to his apartment at about 11:30 p.m. on September 25.  Jimenez says he had just escorted a group of his friends to a cab.  As he passed a group of men sitting on a stoop on South Third Street between Bedford Avenue and Berry Street, he said he heard slurs being hurled at him, which he tried to ignore as he continued down the street toward his home. The next thing he knew, a brutal punch struck him in the face out of nowhere.  “Someone started screaming, ‘Hey you, faggot,” said Jimenez. “I turned around and gave him a look like, ‘What the hell?’ and the next thing I know the guy starts punching me in the face.”

Jimenez could not successfully defend himself as he struggled to hold onto the leashes of his dogs as blows rained down on him.  The assailant, who remains unnamed as of this report except for his being a 35-year-old man, broke his victim’s nose in four places, bruised his jaw. blacked both his eyes, and shattered the bones in one of his eye sockets.  The attack was bloody, leaving copious stains of blood on the sidewalk that remained there for days after the crime.  Though Jimenez is a straight man, NY1 reports that authorities are now investigating the attack as a bias-motivated hate crime.  A witness to the crime called police who found the attacker still at the scene soaked in his victim’s blood.  Officers arrested the assailant, and charged him initially with assault and possession of a controlled substance, and resisting arrest.  Jimenez, now recuperating at home in preparation for reconstructive surgery to his face, says the wounds he suffered go far beyond the physical ones on his body:  “My head, it cannot comprehend how this is the case, where you literally catch someone with blood in their hands, because when he was taken in, his fist was full of blood, and he’s out here walking while I’m in here locked in my house because I’m afraid of going outside.”  

As EDGE On The Net reports, the hate crime attack on Jimenez adds an alarming new dimension to the rising epidemic of violence against LGBT New Yorkers in recent months, since even heterosexual people who are merely mistaken for being gay are now being targeted.  During the summer, two alleged anti-gay hate crimes were investigated in Williamsburg by police, and in Manhattan, a gay man was fatally shot to death in the Chelsea/Greenwich Village area of the city, one of the queer-friendliest sections of the Big Apple, and the cradle of the modern LGBTQ Rights Movement.  Jimenez told CBS 2 New York that coping with the crime against him will be a longtime struggle.  “That’s the most difficult part — waking up every morning and trying to live my life like normal,” he said.

October 3, 2013 - Posted by unfinishedlives | Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Brooklyn, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, New York City, New York Police Department (NYPD), Slurs and epithets | Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Brooklyn, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino / Latina Americans, New York, New York City, New York Police Department (NYPD), Slurs and epithets, Straights mistaken as gay