In an interview with PinkNews, the store's assistant manager Uli Lenart said that Metropolitan police indicated that several witnesses reported seeing a group of youths “rampaging” up and down the street at around 12:30 a.m. and throwing eggs at another store.

The shop, which is 33 years old, was not raided and Mr. Lenart said he was unsure of the cost of the damage.

Mr. Lenart said he did not know whether the shop was attacked because it is a gay store, but pointed out that no other shops in the area had their windows smashed.

He said: “They were apparently laughing their heads off as they smashed the window. One can’t jump to conclusions but the facts are there.”

He added: “We are just relieved that the rock wasn’t followed by a match.”

Gay’s the Word decided to stay open for trading today and Mr Lenart said staff had been touched by the kindness and support of local people, some of whom brought in bunches of flowers.

PinkNews

Lenart told the PinkNews that according to the police, the youths who were on bicycles, had apparently left the area on Marchmont Street and then reappeared ten minutes later with a rock and a bottle, which they threw through the shop’s front window before escaping.

Metropolitan police are continuing their investigation.

The closings, announced Friday, mark the end of the city’s only exclusively LGBT bookstore and becomes another in a series of gay bookstores that have closed in recent years in other cities.

Deacon Maccubbin, 66, the store’s founder and co-owner, told D.C. Agenda in an exclusive interview that he plans to retire soon and that he and co-owner Jim Bennett, his domestic partner of 32 years, decided they would rather close the stores than sell them to a new owner who might change their focus and mission.

Rick Rosendall, vice president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, called Lambda Rising a “landmark” for the LGBT community.

“It will certainly be a major loss for our community,” he said.

Maccubbin said the store will begin a holiday sale as early as this weekend for many of its books and other products, such as gifts items. He said a “huge liquidation sale” will begin immediately after Christmas, with the store expected to close in early January.

Last month, Out Word Bound, Indianapolis' only gay bookstore, also announced it was closing.

Read about Lambda Rising's history, full story at DC Agenda.

"It has been a good run," owners Mary Byrne and Tammara Tracy wrote in an e-mail to customers Wednesday.

For more than a decade, the downtown store has served as a center of gay and lesbian intellectual life, with concerts and book groups meeting there frequently.

Nationally, gay and lesbian bookstores have struggled to compete with larger retailers that now sell books that cater to the gay and lesbian community. Such titles also are available from online retailers.

Earlier this year, the 42-year-old Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York, the nation's oldest gay and lesbian bookstore, closed because of poor sales.

Read more at the Indianapolis Star.