The NYPD is still searching for a man accused of attacking a gay couple in a Manhattan subway station earlier this year. The incident was one of a number of recent suspected bias attacks against LGBT New Yorkers, including last year's fatal shooting of a gay man in Greenwich Village and the fatal beating of trangender woman Islan Nettles last summer.
According to cops, the suspect assaulted J.P. Masterson and his partner, Peter Moore, just after midnight on March 2nd at the West 4th Street subway platform. Masterson told reporters the suspect approached him and Moore, asked them if they were gay and attacked them when they ignored him. "He just came at me in two seconds and then he started shoving me towards the tracks," Masterson told WCBS 2. "He was like, 'I f***ing hate f***ots.'" Masterson says he was punched repeatedly, and suffered a broken nose and broken orbital bone. He and Moore were celebrating their 10th anniversary.
The attack in March is just one of a slew of recent, disturbing bias attacks against gay New Yorkers. In April, four ultra-Orthodox Jewish men were arrested after allegedly brutally beating a gay man in Williamsburg several months prior; the suspects were accused of punching him in the face, knocking him to the ground and kicking him while yelling homosexual slurs at him. In January, a 27-year-old man was attacked by a group of men while walking near near Stuyvesant Town. These men also allegedly made anti-gay statements to him. Also in January, 45-year-old journalist Randy Gener was beaten after leaving a party in Hell's Kitchen; that attack was also investigated as a hate crime. And in 2013, 32-year-old Brooklyn resident Mark Carson and 21-year-old transgender woman Islan Nettles were killed in separate suspected bias attacks.
Cops describe the suspect in the March attack is a white male between the ages of 25 and 30. He is described as 5'8" tall, and weighs 170 pounds. Anyone with information in regards to this assault is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or texting their tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
