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Gay-bash victim in coma
By KATE MEYER, MARISSA WIDDISON, and JONATHAN LEMIRE DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Friday, June 10th, 2005
A frail Brooklyn man was in a coma late yesterday after being savagely beaten and kicked by three men screaming anti-gay slurs, police said.
Witnesses rushed to help Dwan Prince as he lay bleeding outside his building on E. 94th St. and Kings Highway in Brownsville - but they could not stop one of the attackers from rushing back and kicking the 32-year-old again in his head.
“He circled back and kicked the guy in the face,” said a horrified Omar Bascombe, 28, who lives next door. “Then, blood started flowing from his mouth, and he wasn’t breathing.”
Prince, who is HIV-positive, has been in intensive care at Brookdale Hospital since the Wednesday night attack. Though he remained unconscious last night, officials said his condition was improving and he was breathing on his own.
The violence - which is being investigated by cops as an anti-gay hate crime - began shortly before midnight when Prince exchanged words with a man walking by his home, police said.
Investigators did not detail the content of the exchange, but Prince’s neighbors said he made a flirtatious joke.
“I tried to tell [Prince] that you can’t be too nice to everybody, for not everybody will like you,” said Tony Davidson, 43, the superintendent of Prince’s building. “He probably got beat up because he was gay.”
The passerby returned moments later in a dark sedan with two other men. They jumped Prince, pummeling him with their fists and feet, police said.
Scared off by a passing car, the men left only to come back minutes later, witnesses said.
Bascombe, who was sitting on his stoop with a friend, heard the commotion and ran over to find a battered Prince trying to crawl back into his building. Bascombe said he then confronted one of the raging attackers.
“The guy is dying here, and I’m not going to let you kill him in front of my house,” Bascombe told the thug. “I told him not to hit him again,” Bascombe said. “But he did hit him just to show me what he could do.”
Prince, who works as a porter at the building where he lives, momentarily stopped breathing as his attackers sped off.
No arrests were made, and his family was keeping a prayerful vigil at his hospital bed last night.
“He is a great guy, people like him,” said his mother, Valerie Prince, who said Dwan is one of her two sets of twins. “He likes to live life….He’s my only son.”
“He’s a real charmer,” said his stepfather, Melvin Wilder, 50. “I’m upset, he’s a real good kid. This shouldn’t be happening.”
Posted by RBMF on June 12, 2005 10:01 AM | Permalink
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