On the evening of July 20, Amylah Majors and Jamaria Gaskins, a married couple from Richmond, were driving to visit Gaskins’ mother in central Virginia when they hit debris on Partlow Road in Spotsylvania County and heard a thumping sound. They pulled to the side of the road to inspect their car. Before they could get out, a man emerged from a nearby home and gave them a “thumbs up” sign.
Believing he was offering help, they were instead met by a torrent of racial and homophobic slurs and threats from him, another man, and a woman. Moments later, the trio allegedly chased the couple while brandishing guns, forcing them into a crash that ejected Majors from the vehicle.
“They called us [N-words], told us we didn’t belong there, and one of them even exposed himself while screaming hate and slurs at us,” Majors said in a statement posted to a GoFundMe page Gaskins organized on behalf of her wife.
“One of them rode up beside us on a 4-wheeler and aimed a gun directly at my head through the driver’s window,” Majors said in the statement. “In that moment, we truly believed we weren’t going to make it out alive.”
Majors said she woke up in the hospital with a fractured spine, a broken clavicle, a broken rib, a severe concussion, and multiple head injuries. Gaskins suffered a concussion and minor injuries in the crash.
One of the alleged assailants, Elizabeth Wolfrey, 32 — who was photographed holding a gun — has been charged with one count of pointing and brandishing a firearm. A second alleged assailant, 59-year-old Mark Goodman, has been charged with indecent exposure after video of the incident showed him exposing his buttocks to the couple.
Wolfrey and Goodman are scheduled to appear in Spotsylvania General District Court on November 20.
The third assailant has not been charged, but Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office Maj. Delbert Myrick said detectives are still investigating the case, and that more charges, and potentially even bias enhancements for an alleged hate crime, could be filed later.
Myrick told the Fredericksburg Free Press that the victims and suspects did not know one another ahead of the altercation. Investigators are also analyzing the car crash, pulling vehicle data to determine speed, driving patterns, and other dynamics that could support or refute additional charges.
He acknowledged criticism over the sheriff’s office waiting 11 days to release information about the case, but said the delay was to protect Majors while she was hospitalized.
“I didn’t want to release it because the moment I release it, the families or the suspects themselves know exactly where the victim is,” Myrick said. “Part of it was to protect their identity. Once we saw the video, we knew they were out. That’s why we started releasing information.”
Thus far, Majors and Gaskins have raised more than $15,000 of a $125,000 goal through their GoFundMe page. Proceeds will go toward medical bills, trauma therapy, legal assistance, lost income, and replacing their car, which was totaled in the crash.
“This was not just an accident — this was an attempted act of violence meant to harm and silence us,” Majors said in her statement. “We will not be silent. We survived something that should’ve ended us. And now we’re speaking out, not just for ourselves, but for everyone who’s ever been targeted and forced to stay quiet.”
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Donald Zieben-Hood is being held without bail after police say he killed his husband in their Harlem apartment following a history of violent domestic disputes.
Jacob Zieben-Hood, a 34-year-old gay personal trainer, was found dead on August 1 in the Harlem apartment he shared with his model husband, following what police say was a violent altercation between the two. Authorities allege Donald Zieben-Hood, 40, stabbed his husband multiple times before leaving him seated on the bathroom toilet.
According to the New York Post, Jacob suffered multiple gashes to his head and several stab wounds to the back of his leg, including one to his calf that severed an artery and caused him to bleed to death.
A fundamentalist church in Indianapolis is defending a June 29 sermon in which a lay preacher urged congregants to pray for LGBTQ people to die and suggested they kill themselves.
The remarks, delivered by Stephen Falco during a “Men’s Preaching Night” at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, included multiple homophobic slurs, biblical references, and rants against Pride Month, LGBTQ rights, and what he called “disgusting” and “evil” behavior, according to TheIndianapolis Star.
"Why do I hate sodomites, why do I hate f****ts? Because they attack children," Falco ranted in the sermon, video of which was posted to Sure Foundation Baptist Church's YouTube channel. "They're coming after your children, they are attacking them in schools today, and not only schools, in public places, and they're proud about it!
The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) -- the body that oversees high school sports in the state -- over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete on teams matching their gender identity.
In the lawsuit, the Department of Justice claims California education officials and the CIF discriminated against female student-athletes by allowing athletes assigned male at birth to compete against them -- depriving girls of equal educational and athletic opportunities in violation of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education. (Under President Joe Biden, the federal government interpreted the law to also protect students from discrimination based on gender identity, not just biological sex.)
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