The Traill County Sheriff’s Office is investigating after a man says he was attacked outside a bar in Hillsboro, N.D., for being gay.
William Lamb says he was attacked on July 6 while having drinks at A & R Bar in Hillsboro with his husband, Daniel Maldonado, and a group of friends.
The couple claims that a group of people hurled anti-gay slurs at them throughout the course of the night.
At midnight, Lamb says he went outside to smoke a cigarette, when a person called him a slur. When he turned around to face the person, his attacker knocked him out.When he regained consciousness, he realized he was in pain.
“I woke up with some pain in my left leg. My face hurt, my teeth hurt,” he told the Grand Forks Herald.
Maldonado, who was inside during the attack, later found his husband lying on the ground with a broken ankle, a broken nose, and possible damage to his teeth.
Lamb says he has an upcoming dentist appointment to check his teeth. He’s already undergone one surgery, and is using crutches to walk and move about.
He was slated to return to the doctor on Wednesday to learn if he needs additional surgery to reconnect the tendons in his leg that were damaged in the attack.
Traill County Sheriff Steve Hunt told the Herald that his office has been investigating the attack, but no charges have been filed yet.
Even if charges are filed, because North Dakota’s hate crimes law does not explicitly protect LGBTQ people, the attack cannot be charged as a bias-motivated crime.
Both Lamb and Maldonado say they expect a backlash from the small town of about 1,600 people for talking publicly about their experience, but want to highlight the homophobia they’ve encountered.
“I don’t feel safe in the community,” Maldonado says.
“You can’t even hold your husband’s or your girlfriend’s hand without getting assaulted,” Lamb said of the situation LGBTQ people face. “It’s ridiculous, honestly.”
A Las Vegas man allegedly shot at his neighbors for being gay. Larry Walraven, 75, has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon with a hate crime enhancement. According to charging documents, Walraven reportedly targeted his neighbors due to their sexual orientation.
On April 25, one of the neighbors was standing outside his house, just north of downtown Las Vegas, when Walraven approached him, holding a black revolver and pointing it at him.
Walraven fired four rounds at the victim, but, luckily, none of the rounds made contact with him.
Walraven then allegedly said, "I'm going to kill you f*****s." He also said, "I hope you f*****s die" during the attack, according to charging documents.
A South Carolina man was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison for obstructing an investigation related to the murder of a transgender woman.
Xavier Pinckney, 24, pleaded guilty in October to providing false and misleading information to authorities about the murder of Dime Doe, a.k.a Pebbles LaDime Doe.
Prosecutors claimed that, in December 2019, Pinckney had lied to investigators who were looking into Doe's death, and warned a friend, Daqua Lameek Ritter -- who was in New York at the time -- not to return to South Carolina because police were looking for Ritter and that someone was "snitching" about Ritter's past relationship with Doe.
A 53-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder for bludgeoning an unhoused transgender woman to death as she slept on the front steps of the Miami City Ballet in Miami Beach, Florida.
Following a preliminary hearing last week, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Mindy Glazer ordered Gregory Fitzgerald Gilbert to be held in prison without bail as he awaits trial for the murder of 37-year-old Andrea Doria Dos Passos.
According to the Miami Herald, Glazer upped the charge against Gilbert from second-degree murder to first-degree murder based on actions that appeared to show intent.
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