Police Investigate Three Separate Gay Bashings In West Hollywood That Took Place Last Week

Three gay men say they were viciously attacked and beaten in separate incidents by men shouting anti-gay slurs last week in and near West Hollywood. KTLA reports that two of the attacks occurred in West Hollywood and the third took place just outside the city limits, police said. The Los Angeles Police and Los Angeles County Sheriff's departments are investigating the beatings. One of the victims, who identified himself only as "Billy," said he was walking alone along Santa Monica Boulevard, hoping to catch a bus on his way home from visiting a few bars in the area. Suddenly, a man approached him, shouted an anti-gay slur and beat him down to the ground. "(I got) three stitches in my forehead, a couple of bruises on my face which are much better now," Billy said Wednesday. Billy said he was also robbed in the attack. He described his attacker as a white man with short blond hair, standing about 6-feet-tall and weighing about 180 pounds. "He punched me once in the face pretty hard and I was a little taken off-guard by that and he hit a couple of more times after that," he said. Billy said the man clearly targeted him because he is homosexual. One of the two other men attacked last week is an employee at a gay bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. The other is an actor named Kasey Mahaffy, who was booked to sing in a show on the East Coast this week but was unable to because of the injuries he sustained in the beating he suffered. "It's very disheartening to hear that there have been two other attacks within a week," Billy said. Law enforcement officials say they are taking the attacks seriously and are working to find out if they are connected. "We're investigating them fully to determine whether (they) were hate crimes," said the Sheriff's Department's Capt. Kelley Fraser. "Our investigators are working with the victims to determine the full extent of each of the incidents." Billy and Mahaffy's attackers both fit the same description. The attacker in the third incident was described as a black man with a gun.