'Net A New Chilling Gay-Bashing Weapon

NEW YORK - Sickening violence against homosexuals is nothing new, but using the Internet to lure victims elevates attacks from random hate to premeditated evil, experts say.
Last week, interior designer Michael Sandy was lured to a gay hookup spot in Brooklyn, allegedly by a group of thugs who exchanged flirtatious messages with him in a gay chat room.
The victim was robbed, beaten and then chased onto the Belt Parkway, where he was struck by a hit-and-run vehicle. He died days later.
Three Brooklyn men have been arrested and face hate-crime charges.
"One of the things that is particularly disturbing is that it just seems so calculated the way they went about doing this," said Clarence Patton, executive director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.
He said that the use of the Internet as a tool for anti-gay violence was so new that his organization barely had a grip on the number of attacks but that he knew they were up.
"I do know that it's something that we see happening with more frequency in recent years, clearly as the Internet has become a vehicle for people to meet in a lot of different settings," Patton told The Post.
"Just in the last year, there were a number of Internet-setup cases on Long Island."
Police have said this particular M.O. - using the Internet to gay bash - seems new to them.
"I don't know if [the] Hate Crimes [Unit] has had a case quite like this one," said Officer Thomas Vierni, the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender liaison for the NYPD. "If something like this has happened before, we'd like to know about it."
from The New York Post

Gay-Bash Victim Dies

NEW YORK - The gay Brooklyn designer savagely beaten and left for dead in a bias attack near the Belt Parkway succumbed to his injuries yesterday, cops said.
Michael Sandy, who had his 29th birthday Thursday while lying brain dead at Brookdale Hospital, was taken off a ventilator at around 1 p.m. on the instructions of his parents, cops said.
"[Sandy's] future has been taken away by a group who apparently had a pernicious scheme to single him out because of his sexual orientation, lure him to a desolate area, and rob him," Mayor Bloomberg said while calling for "swift justice" in the case.
The three men already in custody in the assault will be indicted on charges of murder as a hate crime, said a spokesman for Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes.
John Fox, 19, Ilye Shurov, 20, and Gary Timmins, 16, are being held without bail. Police are still investigating the role of a fourth suspect.
Authorities said the suspects used MySpace.com to lure Sandy to Plum Beach, near Sheepshead Bay, where they robbed and beat him because he was gay.
In fleeing his attackers, Sandy ran onto the parkway, where a car ran him over.
from The New York Post