A real estate agent was beaten unconscious Saturday morning in Oklahoma City by two people who were allegedly shouting gay slurs.
Christian Council, a Keller Williams realtor, and his friend were on their way home that early morning of June 27, 2020. A car happened to be parked and was blocking his space. Council said he had to honk his horn twice before the vehicle finally moved.
Apparently, the situation did not end there. After getting out of the car, Christian found two people waiting behind his car and upon seeing them asked them if they were a couple and used a gay slur. Things then escalated and got physical.
Christian was assaulted, beaten until he got knocked unconscious. He was still laying on the ground, and everyone that was involved in the incident was still on the scene when the police arrived, Oklahoma Police Department told News 4.
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Christian was left bruised and with a gash under his right eye, and although the swelling has subsided, he said he still has difficulty breathing. No homophobic language was mentioned in the report, but Christian believes the attack was a hate crime. He noted that it was clear to the assailants that when they could tell that they are gay or appeared to be gay, they knew that they could beat him.
While Christian tried to fight back, he said that the suspects did not stop beating him until he was totally unconscious. The suspects, Amery Dickerson and Bennett Stone, were arrested but have been released without being booked into the country jail. Both were extremely intoxicated, according to the police report.
The incident follows just days after a fellow Keller Williams agent was fired after posting an anti-LGBTQ comment on his social media page.
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Meanwhile, a fundraiser has been set up to help Christian cover medical expenses and pursue a civil case against the attackers. As of reporting, the GoFundMe page has raised $9,077.
Based on the FBI data on hate crimes, the number of reported hate crimes against LGBTQ in the U.S. in 2018 rose nearly six percent over the same period the prior year. The number of hate crime incidents targeting transgender people, on the other hand, increased by 41 percent over the same period in 2017.
Participating law enforcement agencies reported 7,120 hate crime incidents in 2018, just 55 fewer than the total reported in 2017. The report broke down the hate crime incidents into six categories based on bias motivation.
Of 7,036 "single-bias incidents" reported, 17 percent were motivated by sexual orientation, 2.4 percent by gender identity bias, and 0.7 percent by gender bias. However, more than half of that total, or 57.5 percent, was due to race, ethnicity, or ancestry bias, while 20.2 percent were prompted by religious bias.
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