The NYPD did its job, and found one of two men suspected of stabbing a gay man earlier this month in the Bronx, reported the New York Daily News.
But while officers mount a search for the second suspect, prosecutors have inexplicably dropped the ball and failed to press hate crime charges against Kareen Ruddock, 25, despite the claim by victim Marquis Devereaux that the men hurled homophobic slurs at him.
Ruddock is reportedly one of the two men captured on surveillance video following the attack on July 10 in Soundview, as WABC-TV reported. Devereux told police they called him a “homo,” “faggot” and “bumbaclot,” a Jamaican slang word for a rag used as toilet paper that doubles as an expletive.
The News reports the Bronx district attorney has in fact put the case on hold, because of something crucial it is missing: its victim.
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Devereaux has eluded prosecutors, according to the newspaper, and it’s unclear why hate crime charges have not been pressed.
This was the second time the out event planner has been attacked. The man who was Devereaux’s super in an apartment building where he was a renter attacked him and mocked his sexuality in 2009; he was convicted in 2011 and jailed for three and a half years.
“This has happened to me twice and the only thing I’m guilty of is being gay a week after Pride,” Devereaux told the Daily News last week. “”What is it that I’m doing it wrong?”