Anti-Gay Hate Crime Leaves Tacoma Woman Hospitalized, Attacker Not Yet Apprehended

In a brutal anti-gay hate crime on Sunday, a Tacoma woman was stabbed, choked and marked with homophobic slurs. The 45 year-old victim has asked to be referred to only by her first name, Chris.

On Monday, she gave an interview with local news station Kiro:

According to police, around 2:45 a.m. on Sunday morning, Chris was searching for one of her dogs that had gotten out. Passing a man on the 900 block of East 51st Street, she asked if he’d seen a dog run by. When the man asked her to come closer, she repeated herself. He pointed her down an alley, then followed her into it.

“He ran up behind me and he said something like why don’t I sound like a boy, that I look like a boy,” she said. “Are you a dyke?” the man asked. “God hates fags.”

The attacker shoved Chris down, grabbed the dog’s leash from her hand, and wrapped it around her neck. As she kicked and screamed, he stabbed her several times with a pocketknife and used the leash to drag her. “I remember getting really light-headed,” said Chris. “It was choking me.” Stripping away her clothes, the man spit on her and wrote slurs including “dyke” on her left buttock, back, and forehead. He screamed violent homophobic remarks and hate speech throughout the attack, according to detectives.

Chris’ dog, Quinn, returned and began biting and barking at the man. He ran off, and a neighbor who had heard the victim’s screams arrived on the scene.

She was going in and out of consciousness, saying that, ‘he tried to strangle me, he tried to stab me — he stabbed me,'” said neighbor Desmond Aarons. In an interview with Q13 FOX News, he described the area of the attack as a popular walking spot in between neighborhoods. “I saw little kids walking down this alley the other day,” Aarons said.

Chris was brought to a local hospital and is currently recovering. As of Monday afternoon, she was still unable to remove some of the slurs written on her body. “I haven’t felt safe in my own skin since [the attack],” said Chris. “I don’t know that I ever will again.”

Police are now looking for the attacker, who Chris described as possibly Hispanic, in his 20s, with a noticeably chubby face and neck, wearing a Seahawks hat and dark Seahawks hoodie.

Tacoma’s Rainbow Center will be co-hosting an open forum with community leaders and the Oasis Youth Center on Saturday to discuss how to end hate crime in the community. Organizers say it will provide a safe place to offer support to the victim, engage in healing dialogue and hear from resource providers. Updates from law enforcement are also expected at the time.

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Laura Mandanas

Laura Mandanas is a Filipina American living in Boston. By day, she works as an industrial engineer. By night, she is beautiful and terrible as the morn, treacherous as the seas, stronger than the foundations of the Earth. All shall love her and despair. Follow her: @LauraMWrites.

Laura has written 210 articles for us.

16 Comments

  1. Ugh, this is disgusting. I have to say it adds an extra layer of disturbing because it’s so close to where I live, not that this Neanderthal would think I “look” like a dyke though. I’m sure he has a very limited understanding.

  2. So you attack someone because religion says it’s wrong. Yet, your same religion(and I think all religions) says that attacking someone is also wrong. It is wrong to say I hope that dude, rots in jail and has a cellmate who is gay as fuck(and not just prison gay)?

    • Um, why would you want to subject some gay person in prison to a homophobic cellmate? It’s a huge problem for a lot of LGBTQ folks who are incarcerated — they get housed with homophoboes, sometimes because the COs are intentionally trying to punish someone for being LGBTQ. This person sounds very violently homophobic, and might attack a gay cellmate like they attacked this person. Just no.

      • That’s why I asked. I was at work when I wrote that so it wasn’t properly thought out as I assumed that the co wouldn’t let violence occur or at least keep it to a minimum.

  3. I used to live in the Tacoma area and it was the one place I always felt most in danger. I felt more OK living in South Seattle on Rainer Ave :-/ I hope they find this creep.

  4. So sad to hear this news. Sending lots of love to Chris for healing at all levels. This was harder to read than usual because it happened just a few blocks from where I used to live and there are still many I know and love in that neighborhood. It’s quite an eclectic area but it has a lot of heart. There have been some scary and violent incidents around McKinley over the years, but this is the first anti-gay hate crime I’ve heard of in the area. It’s some consolation that Officer Cool is on the case. I got to know her a little bit through my work some years ago and she is the essence of her name–an exceptional police officer and a very compassionate person.

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