Eighth suspect in anti-gay beatings is arrested

NEW YORK—An eighth suspect is in custody in the anti-gay gang attack on three men in New York City, police said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters at City Hall that the man turned himself in at a police precinct in the Bronx on Saturday afternoon.

Investigators are still seeking a ninth suspect.

Police say the gang went berserk after learning that a 17-year-old recruit was gay.

Investigators say the teen was stripped, beaten and sodomized with a wooden plunger handle at an empty Bronx apartment. Gang members then allegedly grabbed a second gay teen and tortured him.

The third attack involved a 30-year-old man who was lured to the apartment and sodomized with a small baseball bat.

“When you hear the details of what occurred, torture really is the only word that comes to mind,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a Saturday news conference with Kelly.

“I was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened at the anti-gay bias that contributed to them,” Bloomberg said. “Hate crimes such as these strike fear into all of us.”

Kelly on Friday had announced the arrest of seven suspects.

The eighth turned himself in Saturday and police had received word that the ninth suspect was prepared to do the same but “wound up not doing it,” Kelly said.

It is tragic to see what hate can do,” Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said Saturday. “These three men were brutally attacked … simply for who they are.”