WATCH: Buffalo Teens Charged w/ Assault, Victim Perceived to Be Gay

A 20-year-old man was brutally attacked at suburban Buffalo, New York mall on New Year's Day by two young women. Witnesses says he was attacked because he was perceived to be gay, although he is straight, and authorities will charge the assailants with a hate crime.

Eighteen-year-old Joy Darden and 19-year-old Deonna Burnett are charged with beating and attacking the man with pepper spray in the mall parking lot. The fathers of both suspects claim the young women and the victim "have known each other for years" and the incident was "not" a hate crime.

The victim's family says otherwise: "They were yelling gay slurs", the victim's mother, Michelle Hamilton, tells WKBW. The Cheektowaga Police Department adds that it has recovered evidence to support a hate crime took place, including a note on the victim's vandalized car "containing anti-gay slurs." The case was sent to a grand jury for review for the enhanced hate crime penalties.

This was the second anti-gay attack in Buffalo within 48 hours. In another grusome attack, a young woman was stabbed in her eye by a woman yelling gay slurs as she left a lesbian bar. Watch WKBW's report WHEN YOU JUMP.

Comments

[soulbrotha]

Enjoy jail, girls. When the big, rough lesbians find out why you;re there (I'm sure they watch the news) and you two get seperated, you will wish you had kept your hands to yourselves. Idiots.

Also, I cannot understand why it is taking so long for them to declare a hate crime in the Lindsay Harman case. You can get stabbed in the EYE and called gay slurs and still get away with it? That's some bull.

[nahtans]

whatis happening to our young women???

[yogarunner]

Remember when Metro buses were not allowed at the Galleria?

[Diva1961]

These girls have to learn the hard way. And they will. My friends don't attack me and use pepper spray and call me slurs. That's crap.

I do remember the buses not going into the Galleria mall, but they had to change it because a black girl was killed trying to cross the busy roads that lead into the mall, and her family sued the mall because it was known they did that to try to keep black folks and others who took public transportation for easy access to the mall.

[Nathan James]

18 and 19 years old? I wonder where they learned it was OK to behave with such hateful violence. This is rapidly becoming a very frightening trend, gays and lesbians getting beaten and killed left and right. Like the atrocious murder of Jose Sucuzhanay in Brooklyn 14 months ago, this is another example of how a person can be attacked if someone THINKS they're gay...SMDH.

[Taboo]

Soon, these young ladies will be locked up in a ALL Female prison and be treated like lesbians. Karma is a B!

[Marco Polo]

>>>I wonder where they learned it was OK to behave with such hateful violence?<<<

I'd almost be willing to bet everything I owned that these two monsters attend church regularly. They actually look like some that could've been sitting in the choir stand on that Donnie McClurkin video.

And maybe I'm wrong but what was up with the victim's mother's agitated response about him not being gay? So what if he had been? It's that same attitude that resulted in her son getting the tar beat out of him in the first place. Being gay is not the problem here. It was bigotry and intolerance.

[Giovanni Centurione]

I was wondering that same thing, Marco. The original story to this (day before) said that he was targeted BECAUSE he was gay. It almost sounds like the mother made him tell people he's straight. Maby so he wont embarrass her? Who knows.

[Marco Polo]

Ooops, meant to say "own"

[CC]

Gay or straight, these little b*tches will learn the hard way when they are locked up.

Who maces their friends? This is one of those cases the book should be thrown to set an example to others.

[dt]

Now women are attacking and beating gay men. Then they'll start attacking an d beating gay women just for being gay. Well, they won't be doing that in prison cause the gay women up in there are the type that can beat the average man. Have fun with that girls :-D