A gay man claims he was beaten by a large group of men in Cleveland over Labor Day weekend in what he's described as a hate crime.
According to NBC affiliate WKYC, Jared Fox was visiting his native Ohio from New York and was walking toward a well-known Cleveland gay bar on Aug. 31 when he says he was surrounded by a a group of about 20 men, who taunted him with homophobic epithets.
"They saw that there was a gay bar at the corner and they saw me walking to it," Fox recalled in a YouTube video he posted after the alleged attack. "They said, What's in your pockets?'" Once he told the group he had no money, he says they slammed him as a "broke faggot" before they "started swinging."
Watch Fox's YouTube video about the attack below:
Fox suffered a black eye, a ruptured right ear drum and some hearing loss, as well as dozens of bruises across his body. Meanwhile, Cleveland police are currently investigating the attack as both a robbery and a hate crime, Fox 8 News is reporting.
"I can't un-do what happened," Fox added in the YouTube video. "Thank God that I'm alive ... the only thing I can be right now is thankful. That's the only emotion I feel."
Earlier this year, Ohio's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community was rattled by a spate of three alleged hate crimes. A Northern Kentucky man told Ohio-based ABC affiliate WCPO that he was attacked outside of a Columbus bar on June 6 because he is gay, while another gay man had to be hospitalized after allegedly being punched, beaten and kicked from behind just three days later, according to reports.
Meanwhile, David Conley, who is also gay, was allegedly attacked and robbed on June 10 by a group of men -- one of whom he claims hit him with a 2-by-4 -- who made "vulgar comments as they approached that indicated an anti-gay bias," according to Outlook Columbus' Bob Vitale.
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