A gay couple was attacked with a wooden chair while dining at a Manhattan restaurant on May 5 but NYPD are not treating it as a hate crime.
Jonathan Snipes, 32, and his boyfriend Ethan York-Adams, 25, were at Dallas BBQ in Chelsea finishing up drinks when they bumped into the table of the attacker, according to DNAinfo in New York.
“A table near us audibly started making pretty gross comments about the two of us like, ‘White faggots, spilling drinks,'” Snipes said to DNAinfo. “I don’t let anyone talk to me like that. I went over there and asked, ‘What did you say about us?'”
One of the men stood up and, after a verbal confrontation, it “turned into a physical altercation,” Snipes said.
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 saying “take that faggot”, he said.
Several patrons pulled out their cell phones to record the fight and caught the incident on video.
In the video, York-Adams, tries to shield Snipes by throwing his arm around his shoulder just before a man rushes up to them with a wooden chair and cracks it over their heads. York-Adams falls to the floor and Snipes slumps into a nearby chair.
WARNING: This video contains graphic content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyuzV2D7U98
“These guys attacked us specifically because they knew we weren’t their type of people,” Snipes said.
An NYPD spokesman said an investigation is ongoing, but that the incident was not currently being investigated as a hate crime.
