SignOnSanDiego.com – Kristina Davis and Lisa Petrillo
Spewing anti-gay comments, a trio of baseball-bat wielding attackers smacked two men in the head and stabbed another in the back as the three victims left Balboa Park’s gay pride festival late Saturday night.
The attack ? being called a hate crime by the San Diego Police Department ? is the first violent attack at the annual festival in more than a decade. The weekend-long event drew more than 150,000 people.
?It’s very alarming and very discouraging to hear this much hatred going on right in the core of Pride weekend,? said Frank Sabatini Jr., spokesman for the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Festival.
There have been no arrests and while all three victims were hospitalized, their wounds were not considered life-threatening, police said.
?It’s being investigated as a hate crime,? said police Lt. Margaret Schaufelberger. ?That adds an extra layer of investigation for the detectives to prove in court and it adds an extra level of punishment to those convicted of the crime.?
Police say the attack occurred at 10:45 p.m., about 45 minutes after pop singer Deborah Gibson finished her concert and the festival closed for the night.
Three men, whose identities were not released, left the festival and were walking along a path behind the lawn bowling area on Balboa Park Drive when three men with a baseball bat confronted them. The attackers taunted the victims with what police said were a litany of anti-gay remarks and a fight broke out. Two of the men were beaten with the bat, and a third told police he felt some type of hard object stab him in the back, police said.