SELLERSBURG, Ind. — An openly gay teen claims he was lured into a high school restroom and gay bashed, while other students looked on. Now his family is speaking out about why they think this should be investigated as a hate crime.
Rito Osorio says he was targeted because of his sexual orientation, and said he clearly remembers another teen shouting gay slurs at him before being stuck in the face several times.
“I was sitting at lunch and he tapped me on the shoulder and said hey man we got to talk. So I said ok I didn’t think anything of it. I got up and followed him in the bathroom. I went in there and I looked around and it was packed. When I looked back he hit me and he kept hitting me and hitting me,” said Osorio.
Osorio says the student used gay slurs when he attacked. The student was later arrested for battery with injuries.
The attack left Orsorio with several face fractures and a broken nose.
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“He had a piercing under his lip, and that had been pushed up into the maxilla bone and chipped it, so it is stuck up there and is going to have to be surgically removed,” said the victim’s mother Andrea Osorio.
The Sellersburg Police Chief says he doesn’t believe this is a hate crime, rather a simple case of one student attacking another student.
The attacker, an un-named 16 year-old student, claimed that Osorio was spreading “rumors” that he too was gay, and that was the reason for his attack.
Orsorio’s mother said she feels as if the situtation is being brushed under the rug.
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