- Aaron Spencer, qPDX
- Smith’s damaged car, more photos after jump
As breifly mentioned in Good Morning News, a gay couple was the target of a horrible hate crime on Wednesday, March 14 in downtown Portland. According to the Portland Police Bureau’s report, the two gay men, Kiah Lawson and Sam Smith, were holding hands on their way into the Silverado Bar when the two male suspects approached them. After verbally abusing the pair with anti-gay slurs, a fight broke out, resulting in the two suspects kicking Lawson on the ground.
Breaking away, Lawson ran into Silverado to get help. Bar Manager Imer Rodriguez, after catching the suspect pair vandalizing Smith’s parked car, chased the suspects into Waterfront Park, tackling one of them.
“While I was holding him down,” Rodriguez told qPDX. “He was talking about how ‘queers cause enough problems’ and how he ‘didn’t quite care for fags.’”
Police arrested Paul Anthony Martinson, 39, at the scene at booked him into the Multnomah County Jail. However, the other suspect managed to run off before the police arrived. Detectives remain on the search for the second suspect.
Smith says that the total damage to his Audi comes out to an estimated $4,200. More photos of the car carnage after the jump.
WHY ARE PEOPLE SO FUCKING CRAZY
@1 +1
I would like to hear Martinson expound on a) what problems queers cause and b) why not quite caring for something merits assaults and car stabbings.
I’m also hoping he’s punished in roughly the same disproportion as his own words-actions disconnect.
Brain chemistry never ceases to amaze me. What drives these people to act on thoughts from such an irrational perspective?! At 39 I would have assumed you would have grown the fuck up by now. I am really hoping you are punished in equal fashion.
I don’t understand crazy people either!
But props to that bar manager who chased that guy and tackled him, that’s pretty awesome.
I am extremely non-violent by nature, but things like this bring up a primordial urge to cause great physical harm upon “people” like this.
Yeah, big props to the bar manager.
On top of all their OTHER crazy, stupid thoughts…how long did it take to smash that window, slash the tire, and cut up that seat? How long did they think they could continue to hang out on a downtown sidewalk after gaybashing two guys, and still walk away scot free? Sheesh.
I hope the problems queers cause him are that they’re constantly chasing him down, tackling him like a boss and having him arrested, fully prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned.
Fuckin’ queers.
Prison time is way gayballs.
Is that gentleman in the mug shot one of the perpetrators? I ask, because, he looks a li’l gay himself. Not that one can tell from looking at a mugshot, of course. But, in addition to that, he looks curiously similar to a man I hooked up w/ once from super-gay dating site, Adam4Adam. It was a long time ago, though. So I could be wrong, but…
I will never understand why in fucking hell some people spend so much of their lives worrying about what their fellow humans are doing with their genitals.
I feel safer walking around Downtown Seattle than I do in PDX… when will this city clean up it’s trash? Oh and enough of the drugged out street kids… thanks.