Oak Lawn is an appealing neighbourhood near downtown and Love Field airport with restaurants and bars along its lively main strip, Cedar Springs Road, where Dominguez was attacked. But whether propelled by hate, the intention to commit robberies, or both, the location and profiles of the victims suggest the perpetrators believe gay men are easy targets.
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Only two have been officially categorised as hate crimes: to be classed as bias –motivated the authorities require evidence such as the use of gay slurs. Dallas police did not make a spokesperson available for this article.Īfter a spate last fall there was a quieter period, but activists say there have been more attacks in recent weeks that have gone unreported. Police have made no arrests and seemingly have no suspects. The whole of my left side was extremely sore,” he said.īetween then and now, activists estimate there have been about 30 attacks in the Oak Lawn area – a dozen or so unreported – all but one against gay men and committed by perhaps six to nine individuals. “My wallet was there, my phone was not, my glasses had been shattered. The 26-year-old needed stitches and staples to close head wounds. Someone in the neighbourhood had called 911.” I just knew I was covered in blood and in extreme pain, so I just started yelling and screaming. “I remember waking up a little confused, I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. “I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see anything, I just remember getting hit twice,” he said. Jarret Duke was walking home around midnight one evening last August after finishing his bartending shift. As in the assault on Dominguez, his wallet was not stolen. Two weeks earlier, on 20 September, the same day as the Dallas pride festival, Blake Rasnake was dragged from an Oak Lawn street into a van, beaten with a baseball bat, called a “fag” and dumped out a couple of streets away. And as the weeks and months after his assault would reveal, Dominguez was not the only victim. But while the “what?” and the “who?” remain mysterious, the “why?” seems clear: the 32-year-old is a gay man who was leaving a gay club in Oak Lawn, Dallas’s main LGBT nightlife district.
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Nearly seven months later, no witness or footage has emerged that would help Dominguez fill in the blanks, to add detail beyond the memory of tasting blood in his mouth.