Police in Dallas have classified a
Saturday beating of two gay men as a hate crime, gay weekly Dallas
Voice reported.
The men were jumped on by as many as
four men with baseball bats as they walked towards a gay nightclub on
Cedar Springs Road early Saturday morning.
“They pushed us to the ground and
they had baseball bats and I heard them say 'F**s, give us your
f*****g wallets,'” Alex told local ABC affiliate WFAA. “I
thought I was going to die; I thought they were going to try and kill
us.”
The victims – Kyle and Alex – said
their assailants yelled anti-gay slurs as they kicked, beat and
ultimately robbed them. The attack left Kyle with a broken jaw.
“I still feel like that was why we
were targeted in the first place, because we are gay,” Alex said.
“It was like it was funny to them.”
Officials initially classified the
incident as a robbery. But concern from the gay community prompted
authorities to reconsider.
“Chief [Floyd] Simpson agrees that it
should have been flagged as a hate crime, and so that is the way it
will be investigate,” Laura Martin, LGBT liaison officer for the
Dallas Police Department, told the paper.
Classifying the incident a hate crime
will give the investigation higher priority, Martin said.
“We don't want people coming down in
the Cedar Spring Springs area and thinking they can just beat up and
rob members of the GLBT community because it just seems like a fun
thing to do,” she said.
The neighborhood was rocked by a
similar hate crime in 2008. In that attack, aspiring musician Jimmy
Lee Dean suffered a broken jaw and vertebrae after two men beat him
just blocks from Saturday's attack.
Police say they have no suspects so
far.