The murder of 32 year-old Mark Carson in  New York’s Greenwich Village is being investigated as a hate crime.

Carson and a friend were reportedly being followed and taunted with antigay slurs by 33 year-old Elliot Morales.

Morales fired a single shot from is revolver, killing Carson.

From the New York Times:

On Sunday, the police filed murder and weapons charges against Mr. Morales, and several lesbian and gay groups made plans for a march on Monday to the scene of the shooting. And, as he had on Saturday, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, characterized the shooting as a hate crime.

“It is clear that the victim here was killed only because and just because he was thought to be gay,” he said before delivering a commencement address in White Plains. “There is no question about that.”

But Mr. Morales’s sister, Edith Gutierrez, said she did not believe he could have committed a bias crime — they have relatives who are gay, she said, and Mr. Morales had shown no signs of homophobia. She also said that when Mr. Morales telephoned her from jail on Sunday, “he said he doesn’t remember anything; he was under the influence, he was drinking.”

Read more at the New York Times

 

Rest in Peace, Mark Carson.

Here’s hoping that the person responsible for this senselessly violent act is brought to justice.

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