Law enforcement officials escort several purported members of the “Latin King Goonies” gang on Oct. 8, 2010, following their arrests in an alleged series of anti-gay attacks in the Bronx. (Photo: CBS 2)
(AP) — Police say an eighth suspect is in custody in the horrific anti-gay gang attack on three men in the Bronx.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters at City Hall that the man turned himself at a police precinct in the Bronx Saturday afternoon.
Investigators are still seeking a ninth suspect.
The abandoned home that served as a clubhouse — and allegedly a torture chamber — for a street gang accused of trapping and brutalizing three gay men sits in a neighborhood where homosexuality is both common and tolerated, residents said.
Gay men and women lived openly, and while neighbors were disturbed by some past violent behavior by the group of young men alleged to have been involved in the attacks, some said they hadn’t previously targeted homosexuals.
“I was friends with all of them,” said Natty Martinez, a gay 16-year-old who lives in the Bronx neighborhood.
“They were chill. There was no beef,” she said. “I had no idea they had no heart.”
New York City leaders continued to express outrage Saturday over the attacks, which police say took place over several hours on two nights.
Police said the nine members of a gang that called itself the Latin King Goonies went berserk after hearing a rumor that one of their new recruits, a 17-year-old, was gay.
Investigators say the teen was stripped, beaten and sodomized with a plunger handle until he confessed to having had sex with a 30-year-old man who lives a few blocks away.
Then, the group grabbed a second teen they suspected was gay and tortured him, too. Finally, they invited the 30-year-old to the house, telling him they were having a party. When he arrived, they burned, beat and tortured him for hours. The attack included sodomizing him with a miniature baseball bat, police said.
Five City Council members and other elected officials visited the block Saturday and stood outside the empty brick townhouse where the attacks had taken place.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is gay, passed out leaflets imploring residents to turn in the two suspects still being sought. She and her colleagues were joined by area ministers, civic leaders and residents, who marched in solidarity with the victims.
“People were very, very clear that they wanted it to be known that the acts of these individulas do not represent their neighborhood,” said Quinn. “They were as stunned as anyone that something so violent, so premeditated … could happen here.”
The first of the attacks happened in the early morning hours of Oct. 3. The next two began the next night, and lasted into the early hours of Oct. 4th.
Sitting on the steps of the home where the attacks took place Saturday, Martinez and three teenage friends said the accused men had frequently partied in an empty apartment on the block.
The girls said the young men, who ranged in age from 16 to 23, were “the nicest ever.” Some even went to church, they said. But they added that when the group drank heavily, they did bad things and sometimes beat up people.
Word of the assaults apparently reached residents long before police had pieced together what happened. Jaymarie Mendez, 16, said she heard about the attack, “the next day,” but said that, like other young people in the area, “We don’t talk to cops. We don’t like them.”
The victims, authorities said, didn’t call the police either.
Residents on the block said they were shocked by the violence.
“How can people do something like that?” asked Keith Handsford, 35, an air conditioning repairman who lives next to the building where the assaults took place.
He said he had two teenage nieces who were gay, and lived in the neighborhood, who have had no problems with serious harassment.
A spokesman for the Bronx District attorney said the seven suspects in custody were awaiting arraingment Saturday on charges that would include abduction and sodomy as a hate crime.
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