A 20-year-old Georgetown University student was arrested and charged with simple assault Thursday in an attack on a gay man, the latest in a series of hate crimes reported in the city this month, District of Columbia police said.
Police said Phillip Anderton Cooney, of Texas, and another man yelled anti-gay slurs at the victim early Sept. 9. The two men followed the victim for about a block to the 1400 block of 36th Street Northwest, and one of the men tackled the victim, striking him with a closed fist, police said.
The victim suffered cuts,bruises and a broken thumb and was treated on the scene.
The attack was the third hate crime reported in D.C. this month.
D.C. police were also investigating a similar assault that took place early Saturday outside a nightclub at Ninth and 0 streets NW in the Shaw neighborhood. A least three people on bikes followed the man, yelled anti-gay slurs and then struck him with an unidentified object, police said. The assailants were in their teens or early 20s.
On Sept. 13, a transgendered person was thrown through a plate-glass window on the 800 block of Seventh Street NW. Police arrested a teenager in that case.
In 2007 so far, there have been 27 reported hate crimes. Twenty-one were classified as being motivated by sexual orientation, three based on religion and three based on race.
In 2006, the city recorded 59 hate or biased crimes. Forty were related to sexual orientation, 14 were based on race, four were based on religion, and one was politically motivated.
