Gay Couple Attacked in Times Square

A gay couple was attacked earlier this month in New York City’s Times Square while a crowd watched and did nothing to help. The assailants were four men who were throwing anti-gay slurs at the couple. The attack left one of the men with a fractured jaw that required surgery to repair, and both men have been left frightened and concerned for their safety.

The two men, who requested anonymity from the media to prevent retribution from their attackers, told a local Fox News affiliate that they were strolling through a crowded Times Square holding hands around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 8, when they said they were approached by “at least four different people” who started to harass them because they were gay and holding hands.

“They come up to us, and they’re like, ‘You need to move,’” one of the men states, fighting back tears. “They’re like, ‘You need to move.’ And then they start pushing us, and we’re like, ‘What are you talking about?'”

The couple said the men started using multiple slurs, and that they tried to fight back. One of the men started recording the attack on his cellphone and noticed that despite the copious amounts of people in the crowded Times Square that no one tried to help them. The couple asked police to investigate the attack as a hate crime.

NYPD has confirmed the attack and said that an investigation was underway. “The subject fled the location to parts unknown,” the NYPD say in a statement. “The victims were transported to Mount Sinai Hospital in stable condition. There are no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing.”

This attack is one of the latest out of several incidents that have occurred recently in NYC while clearly targeting the queer community.

On Wednesday, April 5, Rafael Ribot, 44, was badly beaten and stabbed by a group of people who also hurled anti-gay slurs. He said two strangers stopped the attack and saved his life by applying a tourniquet to what he described as “a large, four-inch deep puncture wound” to his leg.

In March, a Manhattan Grand Jury indicted multiple suspects who were connected to the deaths of two gay men who were drugged, robbed, and murdered last year. Julio Ramirez, 25, was found in the back of a taxi after he left the Ritz Bar and Lounge with some men on April 20, 2022. Ramirez’s family said that around $20,000 was stolen from his bank account.

A month later, Robert Umberger, 33, was murdered after he and a couple of men left the Q, a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen. His bank account was emptied of a similar amount of $20,000. Both men died from “acute intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl, p-fluoro-fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, lidocaine, and ethanol.”