Eight members of the New York street
gang Latin King Goonies faced a judge Sunday for their involvement in
a recent anti-gay hate crime spree. A ninth suspect remains at
large, NY1.com reported.
The suspects are accused of attacking 3
gay men in the Bronx. They have been charged with kidnapping, sodomy
and robbery as a hate crime.
On Friday, Police Commissioner Ray
Kelly announced that seven gang members – two men, along with 5
teens – had been taken into custody. The following day, Elmer
“Macho” Confresi, 23, turned himself in to authorities.
After learning that a 17-year-old
aspiring member is gay, the suspects grabbed the youth off the street
on Sunday morning and forced him into a vacant apartment, where he
was beaten and sodomized with the handle of a plunger until he
confessed to having a romantic relationship with a 30-year-old man,
police say.
The man, along with another 17-year-old
boy, was later lured into the same apartment and tortured. The man
was also sodomized with a small baseball bat.
“One of the suspects said later the
man was beaten for hours and then dumped outside of his home,”
Kelly said on Friday. “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.”
During their arraignment on Sunday,
Assistant District Attorney Theresa Gottlieb said that each victim
was asked “Is it true that you're a fag?” prior to being beaten,
the AP reported.
The brother of one of the victims was
also assaulted, robbed and beaten in his own apartment.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was
sickened by the attacks and “saddened by the anti-gay bias” at a
Saturday press conference.
All but two of the suspects are being
held without bail.