A new video has surfaced depicting harrowing footage of a 16-year-old being assaulted by a gang of five attackers in Los Angeles, California.
The teen, who has not been named, was hospitalized for days after the attack last month. Reportedly, the assault happened at a bonfire party on the beach. While not many details have been released, police say the victim was not responsible for instigating an attack. Video footage shows him covering his face as he is stomped on, kicked, and even stabbed by at least five different assailants, whom LAPD believes to be fellow juveniles.
The teen’s mother, who only identified herself in the press only as Frankie, says that she’s not sure whether her son will survive: “The doctor was telling me, ‘We didn’t know whether we were going to lose your son or not.’ He had a tube going through his chest. They had to collapse a lung to repair the other lung. They had to take a camera in his stomach to check to see if there was anything else going on in his stomach because there was so much blood.”
In the video, the teen’s assailants can be hearing shouting racial and homophobic slurs. However, LAPD is unsure of whether this event qualifies as a hate crime. They have supposedly identified and questioned several suspects, though so far no arrests have been made. Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are frighteningly common—Queer people are more than four times as likely to be the subject of violent victimization. This specific occurrence brings to mind the tragic killing of Brianna Ghey, another 16-year-old who was murdered by two of her peers last year. While it is not yet clear whether this teen identified as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, if his assailants believed he was, it would have provided a motivation for their attack.
Frankie does suspect that this was a gang-related hate crime. However, she is also afraid of gang retaliation because she openly cooperated with LAPD in investigating her son’s attack. She created a GoFundMe to cover the costs of possible relocation, which has raised over $27,000.
Photo courtesy of social media
