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As people get older, (harassers) realize, my homophobic slurs and actions … it’s not going to make them go away,” she continued. The harassers “feel like they’re not going to do anything. “It’s moreso an attack toward people that are younger,” Brinkman said. She thinks that the couple are targets because of their ages - 19 and 23. Other times it’s a slur from the window of a passing car. One young woman asked Brinkman how she could “hang around these two gay guys,” and whether she wasn’t “scared” that she would “catch AIDS,” she said. And it seems that some people aren’t afraid to express their hate, either. He’s very open about his relationship,” she said. We don’t have to be at the club for them to be harassed. They’ve had pizza thrown at them,” she said. “It’s really anywhere. She’s been friends with Huizar for two years, while Huizar and Roman have been together for about a year. “Me, Chris and Gabriel, we don’t have to be at the club to be harassed by other people. The attack was awful and heartbreaking, Brinkman said - but it was not surprising. He was no longer in detention as of Wednesday afternoon, according to police records.
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Neither Brinkman nor the victims recognized the suspect, a 24-year-old man, she said. The suspect did not face any bias- or hate-related charges as of Wednesday afternoon. Photos they posted to social media showed them bloodied in the hospital.ĭenver police detained a suspect, Dylan Payne, for investigation of a charge of aggravated assault. The attacker then stabbed Roman in the hand and back as Roman tried to defend his boyfriend, according to a police report. Huizar and Roman told Denver police that they were walking home from the nightclub when a man approached them from behind, yelled the slur “faggot,” and stabbed Huizar in the neck with a pocket knife. After four hours of waiting, she got the text from Huizar: “‘We got stabbed, but we’re OK.’ My heart instantly dropped.” “I just assumed the worst: Did they get arrested, did they get in a fight? These are two gay guys walking around in Denver,” she said.Īnd she was right to worry. I was terrified of what was going to happen.”īrinkman had spent the night out with her sister, her uncle and two of her closest friends: Chris Huizar and Gabriel Roman, whom they hadn’t seen since leaving a nightclub just after midnight. We waited another hour,” the 19-year-old recalled later.
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And she already knew, in a way, what had happened. Brenna Brinkman waited for hours on her friends’ doorstep near Capitol Hill.