A 21-year-old gay Chilean man, left in a coma after an alleged gaybashing in October, has died from brain injuries, El País reports.
Wladimir Sepúlveda Arce was in the company of friends when a group of men and women allegedly targeted them with anti-gay slurs and a fight ensued. Sepúlveda initially managed to escape, but his attackers caught him and allegedly punched him and repeatedly kicked him in the head, according to a Pink News report. It reportedly took about 30 minutes for emergency services to respond to the incident; Sepúlveda’s friends assisted in putting him on a stretcher because only one ambulance attendant arrived on the scene, the report notes.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (Movilh), a gay collective, criticized the health services and police for being slow to respond to the case.
Movilh and Sepúlveda’s family have pledged to press charges against the suspects under hate-crime legislation passed in the wake of the death of another gay man, Daniel Zamudio, who was beaten, burned with cigarettes and had swastikas carved into his skin in a Santiago park. Zamudio died in hospital 20 days after the attack, which occurred in March 2012.
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