Ball State student says attack was hate crime

By NICK WERNER


MUNCIE -- A gay Ball State University student said he and his friends were attacked in The Village early Friday morning because of their sexuality.

"I consider it a hate crime," said the student, Kyle Flood.

Flood, 21, Indianapolis, suffered a swollen eye, cuts and bruises and a scratched cornea that required treatment at Ball Memorial Hospital.

No arrests had been made as of Monday.

Ball State University Police Chief Gene Burton said attacks on gay students were rare.

"Let me put it this way, I've seen it before," Burton said. "But I could not tell you the last time."

News of the attack had started to spread among students as of Monday, according to Travis Schilla, president of Spectrum, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

Students should not panic, Schilla said, but be reminded to be aware of their surroundings and travel to and from bars and social events in groups.

"Ball State is a really a safe campus and the administration has taken this seriously," Schilla said. "Everyone is taking this seriously. It's been really good to see that people care."

Crimes based on sexual orientation represented 15.3 percent of all hate crimes reported in FBI hate crime statistics in 2006, according to Mark Potok, director of The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, a hate crime monitoring group.

And 12.2 percent of all hate crimes reported in the FBI's 2006 statistics happened on college campuses, Potok said.

A SPLC study showed that gays were attacked twice as frequently as blacks and four times as frequently as Jews and Latinos, Potok said.

Potok described hate based on sexual orientation as "the last bastion of acceptable discrimination and bigotry."

Flood said the incident happened around 3 a.m. as he and four friends were leaving Moe's bar, where they had been singing karaoke.

Two college-age men on foot approached the group as they were at Dill Street and University Avenue and started calling Flood and his friends "[expletive] faggots," Flood said.

When a woman in Flood's party asked one of the men to "move on," the man put the woman in a choke hold and threw her to the ground, Flood said.

As Flood attempted to intervene, he was knocked to the ground and punched in the face.

Flood reported that another man in his group was also attacked.

The attackers fled with a third person, who was not involved in the attack, Flood said.

Witnesses told Flood they saw the men get into a car at the Ball State Federal Credit Union.

Ball State police arrived quickly and attempted to track the men down but were unsuccessful, Flood said.

The attack, and the fact that the men remained at-large, has affected Flood's sense of safety.

"I don't think I'll be going to the bars in Muncie in a long time," Flood said.

In 1999, two Modoc men attacked and robbed a gay Muncie man at Prairie Creek Reservoir after meeting the victim earlier in the day at a downtown bar.

The attack left the man with permanent vision damage and persistent headaches.

Defendant Bryan Worden, 29, was released from prison in 2005 after serving 5 years of a 20-year sentence.

Worden's co-defendant, Jay Johnson, remains in prison with an expected release date of 2009.