SANTA CRUZ - Santa Cruz Police said Neoklis Koumides is behind bars
for beating a man with a hammer and it's all because of the man's
sexual orientation.
"What strikes me about something like this
is it sounds like there were two men who wanted to find a place to have
some intimacy," said Adam Spickler of the Diversity Center in Santa
Cruz.
Spickler said he knows that feeling all too well.
He and his boyfriend are very careful about what they do in public for fear of their safety.
"My
boyfriend and I frequently are in the area and I know that I, myself,
could be susceptible to the same kind of treatment," he said.
He
said the San Lorenzo levee, where police said the hate crime happened,
is a place where he likes to bike and walk with his boyfriend.
Police said Koumides attacked a man for being intimate with his boyfriend.
They said the two suspects, a man and a woman, were riding on their bike when they saw the couple.
One of them made an anti-gay slur and then took a hammer and beat the victim.
"It appears he may have been hit three, four, five times on his back and his right leg," said Zach Friend of Santa Cruz Police.
Spickler
said the crime raises a bigger issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender couples not feeling safe in their own community.
"The
lack for two men to feel like they could go to a bar, they could go to
a club and hold hands, and be very public, and very safe, pushes people
into communities like this," he said.
The Santa Cruz Police Department said there haven't been any recent attacks like this one.
The Diversity Center aims to educate and advocate for safe spaces for LGBT people in the community.
For more information, you can call the Diversity Center at 831-425-5422, or visit www.diversitycenter.org.
