https://youtu.be/3i-De9yyp4U
The above video, which was taken Tuesday night in New York City at the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea, is disturbing to watch. However the victims, 32-year-old Jonathan Snipes and his boyfriend, 25-year-old Ethan York-Adams, need help identifying their attackers.
Snipes and York-Adams had just finished having drinks in the restaurant for Cinco de Mayo when Spines received an urgent text about a death in his family and the couple got up to leave. On their way out, Snipes accidentally knocked over a drink which prompted a party at a nearby table with two large men at it to make homophobic remarks directed at them.
Snipes spoke with DNAinfo New York, telling them: “I don’t let anyone talk to me like that. I went over there and asked, ‘What did you say about us?'” Things quickly got out of hand from there.
One of the men stood up and escalated the verbal confrontation, Snipes said. “He turned it into a physical altercation very quickly,” he added.
The man knocked Snipes to the ground and started kicking his face and spine, knocking loose one of his teeth, snapping the cartilage in his ear and bruising his head, he said. He shouted, “Take that, f—-t,” according to Snipes.
Onlookers shouted “Stop! Stop! Stop!” according to a second video posted to YouTube by Isaam Sharef, who also took the Instagram video. “At some point, the guy stops kicking me in the face. He’s won,” Snipes said.
“[York-Adams] gets me up. But as he tried to get me away, that’s when the other dude hits him with the chair,” Snipes said.
Police are searching for a 35-year-old, 6′ 4″ black male in the ongoing investigation, which for some reason is not being considered as a hate crime as of right now. With any luck, word will spread via social media and these men will be brought to justice, very much in the same way that perpetrators of a hate crime in Philadelphia were recently caught.
Here’s the second video, referenced above:
https://youtu.be/GyuzV2D7U98
(DNAinfo New York via Mashable)