Remember those young folks in Philadelphia, all graduates of the same Catholic high school, who were charged this past September after they beat a gay couple to a bloody pulp? If you need reminding of that story, click the label "Philadelphia" below, and what I've posted here — with links to various news reports — will pop up.
An update: as David Badash reports, earlier this week, Judge Charles Hayden of Philadelphia ruled that there's sufficient evidence to arraign Kevin Harrigan, Kathryn Knott, and Philip Williams. They'll be formally arraigned on 6 January. As Victor Fiorillo indicates for Philadelphia Magazine, one of the two men assaulted, Zachary Hesse, testified at the hearing this week that he and his boyfriend Andy Haught were walking down the street minding their own business on the night of the assault, when the group accosted them.
According to Hesse, this then happened (with apologies for the rough language, which I'm quoting verbatim):
Harrigan asked, "Is that your fucking boyfriend?" "I said, 'Yeah, that is my fucking boyfriend," he testified. "'Do you have a problem with that?'" Then he testified that Harrigan said, "'So you're a dirty fucking faggot?' So I approached him and said, 'Maybe I am a dirty fucking faggot.' He pushed me, I pushed him."
And then the following occurred, according to Hesse's testimony:
He identified Harrigan as the man who first hit him in the head, Knott as the woman who "smacked or hit" him in the head and called him a "fucking faggot," and Williams as the man who then hit Hesse again.
Hesse's boyfriend received the brunt of the attack, suffering two broken cheekbones, according to prosecutors, which resulted in his having his jaw wired shut for nearly two months.
Did I mention that Harrigan, Knott, and Williams are all graduates of Archbishop Wood Catholic high school in Warminster, Pennsylvania? I suspect I may have said that already.
It's not an easy detail for me to forget — nor that, according to many reports, the party the group attended prior to their assault was a reunion for graduates of that Catholic school. For information about the connection to Archbishop Wood, please click "Philadelphia" below and read the previous postings that pop up.
The mugshots of Harrigan, Knott, and Williams have been widely published, including by Victor Fiorillo in Philadelphia Magazine.
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