Salt Lake City police are currently searching for an unidentified man who has been recorded on video punching a man after asking whether or not he was gay. As Sal Trejo reported to KUTV, this went down around 1:45 AM outside of a bar on Main Street, while Trejo was waiting for an Uber.
In a now-viral video posted to Twitter, the suspect is seen hitting victim Trejo after confirming that he is gay. The video is embedded below. And as a warning, it obviously contains the above-mentioned violence.
The man says: "Are you gay, though?"
Trejo says, "Oh, I am."
The suspect responds, "Oh, then you're gay?"
As Trejo attempts to answer, saying, ”Yeah, but you called me a [faggot]," the suspect hits him.
Trejo wrote about the incident on Twitter:
It’s unclear why the man approached Trejo to begin with, but Trejo says that the man began making homophobic and misogynistic comments to his group as soon as he went up to them. They began recording him because they worried he might be dangerous, and unfortunately, they were correct. In addition to the punch captured in the video, Trejo alleges that the man shoved one his friends and pulled a knife on another.
Trejo says the man seemed very inebriated. After the attack, Trejo reports that the man walked off, got into a black BMW, and drove away, hitting soft road dividers in the process.
Salt Lake City Police confirmed on Twitter that they’re seeking information about the suspect and incident:
The survivor describes the individual as a white man, roughly 23 or 24 years old, wearing blue jeans, a green T-shirt, and camouflaged print sneakers. He is about 5’ 8” and was wearing a silver watch and Louis Vuitton belt.
According to FBI annual report data for 2017, there were just over 7,100 reported bias crimes that year, and about 8,800 victims. People who were targeted because of their gender identity or sexual orientation made up about 17 percent of the total (1,470) victims. Across the LGBTQ spectrum, this breaks down to about 60 percent gay men, 12 percent lesbians, and 2 percent bisexuals; 25 percent were a mixed group.
Gallup estimates that while the LGBTQ community makes up about 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, it makes up nearly 20 percent of (federally reported) hate crime victims. The reported qualifier is especially important when you consider all the barriers to reporting, such as outing yourself or someone else or fearing police response. So, for example, if you’re a trans sex worker, or a queer person of color, you may experience a hate crime and not report it up, meaning it wouldn’t be reflected in the referenced data.