A 22-year-old man in Delta, Utah has been the victim of a series of anti-gay attacks, one of which culminated in an unknown assailant carving "Die Fag" into his arm, Towleroad's Kyler Geoffroy reports.
Rick Jones told police that he was closing Grand Central Pizzeria and Grill when he was attacked.
"I went out to take out the trash, and when I came back in, I thought it was strange that I didn’t hear the door close,” he said. “I turned around to shut the door, and someone grabbed me by the head and slammed me to the wall."
Jones passed out, and when he awoke, he was on the floor and someone was on his chest trying to force him to drink bleach. He passed out again, only to awake when the emergency medical technicians were debating whether to fly him to Salt Lake City for further treatment. In addition to suffering a concussion, the words "Die Fag" had been carved into his arm.
The following Thursday, those same words were spray-painted on the door of his garage. A few weeks after that, someone lobbed a Molotov cocktail through his bedroom window and spray-painted "You'll Die. Burn Fag" on his house.
That same morning, Grand Central Pizzeria and Grill was burglarized and vandalized. The Millard County Sheriff's Office currently has few promising leads, and issued a press release yesterday asking the community to held bring those responsible to justice.
"These crimes are the latest in a string of crimes perpetrated against the owners of this local business," the release read. "The Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating several different leads in these cases. There is a reward available to anyone providing information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators of these crimes. Also we would like to encourage all citizens to report any suspicious persons or circumstance to the Sheriff’s Office dispatch immediately."
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