Big Bronx crime news. Police say a group of nine young men held two teenagers and a 30-year-old man hostage in an empty Morris Heights apartment and then beat and tortured them over the course of several hours last weekend while hurling anti-gay slurs at them.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly held a press conference this afternoon to announce the arrest of seven of the nine suspects, while two remain at large.
The emerging details are gruesome. One of the teenagers was “thrown into a wall, made to strip naked, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger,” said Kelly, according to a story on the Times' City Room blog.
The 30-year-old man was forced to drink 10 cans of beer, beaten with a chain and sodomized with a baseball bat, Kelly said. The other teenager was forced to burn the man with a cigarette.
The suspects are all members of a group called The Latin King Goonies, but Kelly said they weren't affiliated with the Latin Kings street gang.
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. quickly released a statement condemning the attacks. “The news of these hate crimes sadden us all, and I am grateful that the NYPD has moved so quickly against those responsible for these homophobic attacks. Bronxites will not tolerate any form of bigotry in our borough, and we stand together as 1.4 million residents to condemn these actions and to oppose hatred in all its forms,” Diaz Jr. said.
Here's the Post story and the Daily News story. NY1 has some video of Kelly's press conference.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Seven Arrested in Bronx Bias Attacks
Labels:
bronx crime,
hate crimes,
Morris Heights
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I'm happy to hear BP Diaz's statement on homophobia and bigotry. I have to say, if we are really going to take his words seriously --"Bronxites will not tolerate any form of bigotry in our borough" --then we can no longer tolerate his father's blatant, anti-gay bigotry.
ReplyDelete1) The Daily News headline "GANG SEX TORTURE" was despicable. This was not ""sex," much like Nazi Germany was not sex. This was kidnap and torture. Sex is not a crime. These acts were.
ReplyDelete2) If we approach this from the perspective that it's ONLY about violence then we'll not solve it. This is about comprehensive dysfunction.... poverty, education, health care, parenting, housing and a host of other issues about life in the Bronx. We need a very detailed mirror to look at.... and REAL leadership to attack a series of complex issues for the long term.
3) By continuing to disenfranchise gays and lesbian from a legislative perspective... read: gay marriage... then we'll continue to send undercurrent messages of inequality that are picked up by some people and used in this vile and disgusting way. We need our leaders to make the right decision on equality and fairness and right and wrong and realize that legislative actions are not only about politics.. and when you send the wrong message it can have have REAL consequences. It is of no small significance that the loudest opponent to gay marriage in the State Legislature is a Bronx senator.... who was just re-elected.
Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz, Jr.'s father State Senator Ruben Diaz has made a career of inciting ruthless anti-gay hatred. Where is his denunciation of this atrocity?
ReplyDelete