A 19-year-old man hit a college student in the head with a baseball bat last month during a fatal beating that has drawn nationwide attention from gay rights activists, police said Friday.
Gay rights groups have denounced the early Aug. 19 beating of Marcellus Andrews in Waterloo after witnesses were quoted in a local newspaper saying assailants had taunted him with anti-gay slurs. One witness, an acquaintance of Andrews, said she punched a girl after the name-calling did not stop, a fight broke out and Andrews was brutally beaten. The 19-year-old died days later in an Iowa City hospital.
Claims of a "gay bashing" in Iowa went viral even as the Waterloo Police Department said it was not treating the ongoing investigation as a hate crime and some of Andrews' family and friends downplayed the idea and said he was not gay even if he sometimes acted feminine.
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Complete article at Chron : http://bit.ly/mXJAn8
