Washington, D.C
D.C. police investigate assault of gay model as a hate crime
A 22-year-old gay man was assaulted by multiple people in Washington, D.C., early Sunday morning after not saying “excuse me” to one of the assailants, according to a Metropolitan Police Department report.
The incident occurred on the block of 14th Street and U Street, in the city’s upscale Logan Circle neighborhood, after 1 a.m.
Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro was out at the nearby queer night clubs Crush Bar and BUNKER on Saturday night before the incident. In an interview with NBC News, Lascarro and his husband, Stuart West, said they frequent the neighborhood, which is popular with the city’s LGBTQ community.
“This is an area that we visit almost every weekend,” said West, who was not with Lascarro at the time of the incident.
Before going home, Lascarro stopped at a McDonald’s located across the street from the two bars. While at a self-service checkout, he decided that the restaurant was too crowded, so he canceled his order.
When he turned around to leave, Lascarro said, he was confronted by a woman in line behind him, who remarked that he needed to say “excuse me.”
He said he avoided the confrontation and headed for the exit, but multiple people blocked the doors, insisting that he needed to apologize.
According to the police report, Lascarro was then called a homophobic slur multiple times, including by one suspect who said: “I’m going to teach you how to say sorry, f—–.”
Lascarro said he refused to apologize, which led to multiple people beginning to attack him and “punch him all over.”
As many as 10 to 15 suspects, both men and women, were involved in the assault, according to the police report.
The alleged assault spilled onto the sidewalk outside the restaurant, where Lascarro reported that he was continually punched, called a homophobic slur and had garbage thrown at him.
The restaurant was not reachable by phone Wednesday, and the McDonald’s corporate office did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Police are investigating the case as a hate crime, classifying the offense as a simple assault with an anti-gay bias motivation, according to the police report.
After the assailants left the scene, two pedestrians who encountered Lascarro helped him call 911. He was transported to Howard University Hospital to be treated, the report said.
On Wednesday, Lascarro said he felt “tired and frustrated” and is experiencing headaches in addition to continued pain, swelling and bruising on his face.
Lascarro, who is originally from Colombia, moved to Washington, D.C., last year and became a permanent resident of the U.S. this year. He said he is having a hard time recounting the incident to his family, with whom he struggled to come out as gay.
“I feel overwhelmed by it all and lost,” he said.
West added that Lascarro works as a model, and the combination of fear to commute to work and damage done to his face has had “a devastating effect on his ability to be successful right now.”
The couple are in contact with local officials about the case, West said, and he is also reaching out to “every possible local government contact that you can think of” to raise the issue of protection for the city’s LGBTQ community.
In August, a gay man accused a group of Shake Shack employees of beating him after he kissed his boyfriend at the restaurant’s location in Dupont Circle, one of D.C.’s most historically LGBTQ-friendly neighborhoods.
Washington, D.C., is set to be the host of WorldPride in 2025.
To mark Gun Violence Awareness Month, residents in Southeast D.C. came together to search for a lasting solution.
The Trigger Project held a peace walk Saturday afternoon reflecting on lives impacted by gun violence
The Trigger Project decided to host the walk to give victims’ loved ones a chance to be among others who have experienced the pain of losing a loved one.
The agency said it prides itself on getting the word out about how to prevent gun violence through lived experiences, community leadership and partnerships. The group aims to uplift young people through healing, opportunity and connection while addressing the root causes of gun violence. Another critical part of the event was to ensure that young people have a safe space where they can hang out.
“We’re losing too many of our babies to the streets, you know what I’m saying?” said Darlene Williams, who said she has been a victim of gun violence and also lost her granddaughter to gun violence. “Like I say, the guns don’t kill, people kill. [..] Be around other people, you know what I’m saying, that’s going through the same thing that we’re going through.”
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Back to The Atlantic
(NEWS FROM THE STATES) – Visitors from across the United States traveled to the National Mall Thursday for the opening day of the Great American State Fair, a days-long event that is part of President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 celebration of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
States and territories showed off cultural and agricultural exports at exhibits stretching nearly a mile. Attendees snapped photos on the small Grand Ole Opry stage in the Tennessee booth, kids tried putt-putt at Indiana’s miniature golf course and cowboys rode horses at Montana’s rodeo.
A 110-foot Ferris wheel slowly turned at the center of the freshly manicured lawn, framing the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol in the distance on either side. Nearby stood a model of Trump’s controversial “triumphal arch.”
People collected swag from each state — drawstring bags from Ohio, stickers from South Dakota, snacks from Tennessee — and could receive a stamp on state fair passports.
The fair is part of the larger Freedom 250 programming and kicked off Wednesday night with a rally on the mall featuring a speech from the president that closely resembled his remarks along the 2024 presidential campaign trail. The festivities will continue over Independence Day, when Trump will deliver a second speech followed by what is promised to be an impressive fireworks display.
The president will visit North and South Dakota as part of his Freedom 250 tour for the opening of the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library and Independence Day eve fireworks above Mount Rushmore.
Freedom 250 then extends into August with a high school athletic competition in Washington, D.C., dubbed the “Patriot Games” and a Freedom 250 INDYCAR race around the National Mall.
The administration’s celebration is separate from the America250 commission, created by Congress a decade ago, and which has its own nationwide programming this year.
From Lake Erie to the Ohio River
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and first lady Fran DeWine greeted guests in Ohio’s pavilion. The couple posed for photos in front of a map of the Buckeye State.
“We wanted to see on the wall all the different things, from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, all the different fun things you can do in Ohio,” the Republican governor said, adding the state has local celebrations and initiatives planned for the 250th anniversary, including “Movies in Ohio” for community showings of films that feature the state.
Ohio’s first lady showcased a children’s literacy exhibit on the opposite wall and touted the roughly 427,000 participants in the state’s partnership with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a program that mails free children’s books monthly to households with kids under age 5.
“We’ve mailed out 27 million books. We know that a child’s brain is 80% developed by age 3, so we want to get them those books early,” she said.
Reflecting on America’s milestone birthday, the governor said, “We’re always a work in progress, Ohio’s a work in progress, this country is a work in progress.”
“I think you know the thing we need to keep in mind, all of us, is there’s some essential core principles that we all believe in. … We may disagree about different policies, but the core principles are the same,” he said.
Cartwheels on the lawn
People from various states walked from exhibit to exhibit, while stopped in the nation’s capital during road trip vacations.
Tanya Geders, 43, of St. Louis, Missouri, did a cartwheel in the mall lawn, trying to persuade her son to join in. The family stopped at the state fair on their way to Virginia Beach.
“We’re like, well, if we go to the ocean, we can go to D.C. and what a better time to be here than the 250th anniversary,” Geders said.
Robyn Toman, 71, of Severn, Maryland, escorted her 12-year-old grandson Miles to meet DeWine and grab a photo with the governor.
Toman said she remembers the country’s bicentennial.
“I was a kid about his age, and I came in 1976. I said, ‘We’re gonna go, let’s go down to D.C. for a couple days and see this,’” she said.
“We’ve enjoyed it. We went over to the archives yesterday, and saw the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. And, oh, that was so nice, that was fantastic.”
Not all states are there. A spokesperson for Washington state’s lieutenant governor’s office told States Newsroom the administration declined to join because of “the costs to the state associated with participating.”According to news reports, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont did not contribute exhibits, though many are still represented by flags outside the individual booths.The state officials did not immediately respond to States Newsroom for confirmation.
All states that reportedly did not participate, with the exception of Vermont, are Democratic-led.
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