TRIBECA — Five men yelling "Trump" attacked a man walking with a group of fellow LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter activists in TriBeCa, according to police and witnesses.
The victim, who declined to give his name to police, told officers that he and about eight other men and women were headed down Walker Street towards Broadway just after midnight on Sunday, chanting LGBTQ positive messages when five men started yelling at them "Trump, Trump, Trump," police said.
The interaction quickly escalated and the man told police he felt he was assaulted because he was gay. He declined to give police further details of the attack, police said.
Clare Sherry, a witness who was a part of the group of friends and activists walking in TriBeCa that evening, said the night had been celebratory until the "brutal" attack.
The group had just left a party at Decolonize This Place, an activism-centered residency at the Artists Space at 55 Walker St., and were chanting things like "We're queer, we're here, we're fabulous," as they were on their way to get dumplings after the exhibition's closing reception on Dec. 17.
"It was just a positive night and we were walking along when all of a sudden these guys start yelling things like 'Trump Won, Trump Won and 'Blue Lives Matter,'" she told DNAinfo New York. In response, she said her group started chanting "Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole" to drown them out.
Sherry said she didn't see how the attack broke out but soon saw a tall man beating her friend on the street, screaming "fa--ot" while he was punching him. The attack became a "brawl" as people were trying to pull the man off of the victim — and others, including Sherry, got hurt in the melee.
"This guy was literally roaring, he had torn his shirt off in the middle of the street," Sherry said of the attacker. "I was trying to pull him off, yelling at them to stop and that they were animals."
She said he pushed her off, but then, all of a sudden "he stopped his rage, like he had snapped out of it," then he and the other self-proclaimed Trump supporters just walked off, she said.
Patti Cruz, another woman who said she was in the group that evening, posted a similar account of events that night on Facebook, along with photos of the alleged victims.
According to Sherry and others involved in the fight, her friends had been wary of going to the police, fearing they wouldn't be treated fairly.
A couple of people came into to start a complaint on Dec. 20 related to the attack, but declined to give their names or contact information, according to police sources.
Police sources said they were still investigating the claims.
