The NYPD is investigating a restaurant beatdown as a possible hate crime after wild video taken at a Chelsea eatery showed an attacker smash a wooden chair over a gay couple, knocking them both to the ground, witnesses and cops said.
According to DNAinfo.com, which first reported on the assault, the beating came after the attacker lobbed several anti-gay slurs at the couple, identified by the website as Jonathan Snipes, 32, and his 25-year-old boyfriend, Ethan York-Adams.
"These guys attacked us specifically because they knew we weren't their type of people," Snipes told DNA. "It was disgusting. It was awful.”
The brawl at the Dallas BBQ Tuesday night had briefly been broken up before the suit-wearing, heavy-set bald man, rushed in with a chair and sucker-slammed the men on the head around 11:05 p.m.
York-Adams falls out of sight while Snipes sinks into a chair as he absorbs the blow. Someone, apparently a restaurant worker, can be seen trying to maintain calm before the brutal bash.
Snipes was kicked while on the ground, according to police. Neither man was hospitalized, but Snipes told the website he had cartilage in his ear snapped and a tooth knocked loose in the melee.
"They hit us hard and then they wouldn't stop. I was hobbling away and they came and attacked us again," Snipes told DNA. "We were just trying to get away from it."
Witnesses can be heard screaming in the background. The man who posted the shocking video, Isaam Sharef, said the bearded attacker fled the restaurant at 261 8th Ave.
The unidentified attacker smashes the chair on the two men as they stand by a table at the Chelsea restaurant.
(isaamsharef via instagram)
The men did not see the attack coming.
(isaamsharef via instagram)
The men had been taunted all night by the attacker, according to a witness.
(isaamsharef via instagram)One of the wounded men, York-Adams, appeared to be unconscious on the ground for several minutes before an ambulance arrived. Police arrived on scene quickly, he said.
The couple had been in a verbal argument that almost turned physical, Sharef said, when the unidentified man with the chair said something one of the duo didn’t like.
“Everyone was commenting on them fighting,” Sharef told the Daily News. “It was a big scene.”
Snipes went over to the man and took a swing at him, sparking the fight, Sharef said. The big man was able to get Snipes on the ground and stomp him before York-Adams stepped in to separate the two.
That’s when Sharef caught the chair slam on video.
"He was calling them f----ts all night," Sarah Meyers, 33, a friend of the victims who spoke to them afterward, told DNAinfo.com of the attacker. "It's disgusting. It's unbelievable.”
The attacker, described as a 35-year-old man standing 6-foot-4, has not been caught, police said. The NYPD confirmed the incident is under investigation.
Sharef said he never hear gay slurs and doubts the incident was a hate crime. The restaurant, in the heart of Chelsea’s gay club district, is known as a gay hangout, he said.
Snipes got in touch with Sharef and indicated that he hoped to press charges against the unknown attacker.
“I didn’t get the impression it was a hate crime because the other guy (Snipes) started the fight,” Sharef said.
Snipes, though, told DNAInfo that the fight began after he knocked over a drink on his way out of the restaurant and the attacker said, “White f----ts, spilling drinks.”
"I don't let anyone talk to me like that. I went over there and asked, 'What did you say about us?'" he told the website. "I may be a mouthy broad, but I wasn't going to take it to that level.”
Dallas BBQ operations manager Eric Levine did not respond to an email requesting comment.
City Councilman Corey Johnson said in a statement Wednesday he was “appalled and angered by the senseless act of anti-LGBT hate violence that was perpetrated last night at a restaurant in my district. I urge the perpetrators of this act to turn themselves in immediately.”
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