New York City police announced Friday
that 7 males have been arrested and 2 more are sought in connection
with a series of anti-gay hate crimes, NY1.com reported.
“Three victims were held against
their will by as many as nine assailants who beat them” in an
apartment, and “the fourth individual was beaten and robbed
elsewhere in connection to these attacks,” New York City Police
Commissioner Ray Kelly said during a news conference.
Police say all four attacks occurred on
Sunday by members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King
Goonies after they learned that an aspiring member is gay.
In the morning, the 17-year-old boy was
grabbed off the street by nine gang members and forced into a vacant
apartment, where he was beaten and sodomized with the handle of a
plunger.
Two more male victims, 17 and 30, faced
a similar fate later in the day.
“One of the suspects said later the
man was beaten for hours and then dumped outside of his home,”
Kelly said. “These suspects had employed terrible wolf pack odds
of 9-1. Odds that reveled them as predators whose crimes were as
cowardly as they were despicable.”
The brother of one of the victims was
also assaulted, robbed and beaten in his own apartment.
Two men – Ildefonzo Mendez, 23, and
David Rivera, 21 – along with three 17-year-old boys and two
16-year-old boys have been arrested. Two men – Elmer Confessor,
23, and Rudy Vargas-Perez, 22 – remain at large.