Jose Escobar Menendez – Photo: Ricky Alvarenga/GoFundMe
The friend of a Northern Virginia man who was killed last week claims he may have been targeted due to his sexual orientation.
Police found the body of 24-year-old Jose Escobar Menendez, of Winchester, on the roadway along Emerald Point Terrace, near Winding Road, in Sterling, Virginia, around 3:30 a.m. last Wednesday.
Authorities have not yet revealed the cause of death in the case.
“This remains a very active investigation, and at this time the motive is unclear,” Kraig Troxell, a spokesman for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, told theΒ Loudoun Times-Mirror. “There is no indication there is a threat to the community.”
No information on a possible suspect has been released by police at this time.Β
But a woman, going by the Twitter name @lesliecobenas, who describes herself as Menendez’s friend, says he was gay and that she fears he may have been the victim of a hate crime.
In a now-deleted tweet, she claimed that Menendez’s body was in “very bad shape,” but declined to say how he died.
“We know it was a homicide, but no one has any idea what his whereabouts were that night or with whom,β she said in the deleted tweet.
“He was murdered & we believe it was due to his sexuality…. We think he met up with someone off of a dating app.”
The woman told theΒ Times-MirrorΒ in an interview that Menendez was an “amazing friend.”
“He was so sweet — always happy and cheerful,” she said. “HeΒ was always that person to hype you up. He just wanted everyone to have a good time.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up for Menendez’s funeral costs, and had raised more than $12,000 as of Monday evening.
The organizer of the page, Ricky Alvarenga, says he is a cousin of Menendez and has asked for respect and privacy for the family.Β
“We are as a family completely devastated and broken and the last thing that we would ever expect was to have to be making accommodations for this tragedy,” he wrote.
“Which this is the reason I am fundraising to help out the most that we can during the time that was already devastating for us.
“Please, we appreciate any help and from the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much. #JusticeForJose.”
Russian authorities reportedly forced at least two men to participate in a sting designed to entrap and imprison gay men.
Matvey Volodin, a Moscow resident who creates adult content under the name USSRboy, was lured by police in the autonomous Republic of Dagestan, located in the North Caucasus region, according to the independent investigative Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Volodin -- who reportedly identifies as a heterosexual who has sex with men -- came to Dagestan in late May in response to an invitation from presumed fans who contacted him online and told them they had rented him an apartment in Makhachkala, Dagestan's largest city.
Trey Cunningham, an internationally-ranked high hurdler who made the 110-meter finals at the U.S. Olympic trials last month, has come out publicly as gay.
The 25-year-old former Florida State University standout came out privately to family and friends at age 20, calling the process "the scariest thing I've ever done" in an exclusive interview with The New York Times.
For Cunningham, who grew up in rural Winfield, Alabama, raised by a conservative family, the idea of being gay was quite foreign. He says it took him a few years to accept his own sexuality, and the idea that his life would be different from how he thought it would be. His parents also initially pushed back on the news.
Col. Edward Thomas Ryan died on June 1, the first day of Pride Month, at the age of 85 from complications related to intestinal cancer.
The decorated Army veteran's obituary, which ran in the June 8 edition of the Albany Times-Union, included a message he wrote ahead of his death.
"I must tell you one more thing," the message begins. "I was Gay all my life: thru grade school, thru High School, thru College, thru Life."
The message then reveals Ryan "was in a loving and caring relationship with Paul Cavagnaro of North Greenbush. He was the love of my life. We had 25 great years together. Paul died in 1994 from a medical procedure gone wrong. I'll be buried next to Paul.
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