Man Stabbed in Robbery Try After Gay Bar Vandalized : North Hollywood: Police determine that there is no connection between the two incidents.

A patron of a North Hollywood gay bar was stabbed in the chest and seriously wounded early Wednesday after an unidentified vandal painted the words kill homos on an exterior wall of the building, Los Angeles police said.

Police initially linked the stabbing to the freshly painted graffiti and characterized it as a hate crime. But they changed the classification to a street robbery and attempted murder after the hospitalized victim said his two attackers had demanded money.

“There was no discussion of his sexuality or any indications at all of that being the motive,” said Police Lt. John Waters, adding that the attackers did not appear to be carrying any paint paraphernalia.

Neither the attackers nor the graffiti vandals have been arrested and police are investigating the crimes as separate incidents.

The graffiti, written in red letters on the eastern wall of the Rawhide bar, 10937 Burbank Blvd., will be investigated as a hate crime, Waters said.

Stabbing victim Daniel Struck, 35, of Studio City was listed in stable condition in the intensive care unit of Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills.

Struck left the bar about 1:30 a.m. and was walking to his car when he was approached by two men who asked him for money, Waters and Lt. Ron LaRue said. He told the pair that he did not have any and was immediately stabbed, the officers said. Struck then managed to kick his attacker in the groin and run back into the bar, where others phoned for an ambulance, LaRue said.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center said he still considered the attack a hate crime because it happened to a man as he left a known gay bar and occurred near freshly painted homophobic graffiti.

“It sounds very clearly that the man was attacked with anti-gay fervor,” said David M. Smith, the center’s public information director.

Smith and other gay rights activists said Wednesday that they considered Struck’s stabbing a symptom of state-sanctioned homophobia, and blamed Gov. Pete Wilson’s recent veto of AB 101--a bill that banned job discrimination against homosexuals--for giving gay-bashers a green light.

As evidence, Smith and Richard Jennings, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said their offices had experienced a large increase in hostile phone calls and threats since the veto last month.

But an attorney for the Rawhide said he and the bar’s owners, who he declined to identify, agreed with the Police Department’s assessment.

“I have no reason, nor does my client, to disbelieve the categorization of the crime,” Encino attorney Ronald S. Berg said. “The owner believes this was just one of those random acts of violence that unfortunately occurs.”