A gay man has filed a lawsuit against
Redmond O'Neal, the only child of actor Ryan O'Neal and the late
actress-model Farrah Fawcett, accusing him of an anti-gay hate crime.
In his lawsuit, announced Thursday, Ken
Fox accuses O'Neal of assault and battery, intentional infliction of
emotional distress, violation of civil rights, negligence, loss of
consortium and negligent infliction of emotional distress, USA
Today reported.
Fox claims that O'Neal approached him
as he was walking in his Los Angeles neighborhood. Fox alleges that
O'Neal, who was wearing a hoodie and holding a bottle in a paper bag,
asked him, “What are you looking at?” before he hit him in the
face with the bottle and hurled a gay slur at Fox. O'Neal continued
to punch him and call him slurs as he lay on the ground, Fox said.
“I literally thought I was going to
die,” Fox said during a press conference with his attorney Gloria
Allred. “All I could do was scream until he just walked away.”
Fox said that it has taken him four
months to recover from his injuries.
“I am speaking out today because I
need to do what I can to make sure that this man never injures or
hurts another defenseless ‘faggot’ ever again,” Fox
said. “That’s what Mr. O’Neal called me right before he
sucker punched me. The word faggot is hate speech and just one of
many offensive terms used to make gay men feel ashamed of
themselves.”
O'Neal, 33, is currently in custody and
awaiting trial for a May 8 robbery of a 7-11 store in which he
threatened the store clerk with a knife. Fox is among five men who
have accused O'Neal of confronting them without provocation between
May 2 and May 5. Two of the men were seriously injured.