An unknown suspect hurled anti-LGBTQ slurs and punched a man in Greenwich Village on July 3, the NYPD said.
Dr. Sina Rezaie, 29, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, told NBC he was walking home from the subway in Manhattan at 3 a.m. when a man shouted a homophobic slur at him. Shortly after, the perpetrator punched and kicked the victim several times before fleeing the scene.
Rezaie left the attack with multiple injuries, including a broken jaw that doctors wired shut with metal, according to NBC. He was transported to a nearby hospital and is in stable condition, police said.
“He called me a ——-, and then half a block later, he came from behind and kicked and punched me multiple times,” Rezaie told NBC hours after the attack from his hospital bed.
Following the incident, Rezaie sought assistance at an unnamed bar. His friends, Laurie Beck and Richard Delay, who are employees at the bar, said they noticed Rezaie was frantically wandering the streets.
“[Delay] went outside to check it out, then he starts waving to me, so I grabbed a bottle of water and some paper towels and ran outside,” Beck told NBC.
Rezaie was holding his mouth and had blood all over his face when Delay saw him.
“He said that he had gotten attacked by some guy who said something to him as he came off the train,” Delay told NBC. “Apparently, the guy called him a slur and then threw him to the ground and started kicking him repeatedly.”
This incident comes amid a string of anti-LGBTQ incidents in New York City. On July 6, a suspect wielding an unknown object slashed a man in the face while hurling anti-gay statements. Similarly, on July 1, a man was stabbed and allegedly called a “f****t” by an unidentified suspect on the subway.
As Rezaie recovers from his injuries, he is still trying to understand the motivations of his attacker.
“I don’t know why this happened to me,” he told NBC.
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