A Thunder Bay gay man is in hospital for reconstructive surgery after he was attacked with bricks by a group of six to eight men early Saturday morning, reports tbnewswatch.com.
John “Jake” Raynard was smoking outside of a bar with two friends when a man approached to ask for a cigarette. Raynard and his friends walked away when the man became aggressive, and Raynard says they were soon followed a group of men shouting anti-gay comments.
“It was like they were waiting in the woodwork,” Raynard told tbnewswatch.com from his hospital bed. “The crowd just seemed to get bigger.”
One of the men grabbed Raynard’s friend and began choking him. Raynard says he struck the man in retaliation and he yelled at the group in an effort to scare them off. Raynard’s two friends managed to escape in a taxi, but he says the group blocked him from also getting inside. Raynard ran screaming down an alley as the men chased him, and he says the last thing he remembers is banging on a restaurant window for help. He woke up in the hospital on Saturday afternoon.
“What happened that night was a hate crime,” Raynard’s sister Jackii told the news website. “They broke the whole left side of his face. His face speaks for itself.”
For more, read the full story at tbnewswatch.com.
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