SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A University of California, Berkeley professor celebrating Pride at the Dyke March in San Francisco says that he was beaten and concussed. He’s now speaking out about the aftermath.
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Thousands of people packed into Mission Dolores Park on Saturday, June 28 for the Dyke March.
For Damon Young, it started as a day of celebrating Pride but ended with violence as he says he was targeted for simply being part of the community.
Young says just before 6:30 p.m. he went to take his dog home after the park festivities when he was confronted by a group of people.
“Before I knew it, I was on the ground, and I was holding on to the dog leash and a hot dog that went flying,” says Young. “I fell onto a guy’s picnic blanket and the guy was just punching me in the face over and over again really hard.”
He says he’s disappointed no one around stepped in to help or call 911.
“I understand why people weren’t able to intervene to stop the violence but, in the aftermath, you know nobody came to my aid and I didn’t know what to do,” says Young.
Young says cell signal wasn’t allowing him to call his boyfriend for help. So in a daze, and as his face began swelling up, he says he located two firefighters responding to an unrelated call near the event.
“They basically were dismissive and told me to find a police officer in the park,” recalls Young. “At one point one of them said ‘well, we can call you an ambulance if you like’ and I was worried about the dog. That’s all I could think about. I said, ‘I don’t want an ambulance; I just need some help,’ but again, they didn’t offer to look at my injuries, give me some water, have me sit down and take some deep breaths.”
Young says when he finally made it home, his boyfriend brought him to the emergency room where he learned he got a concussion.
Photo courtesy of Damon Young.
While he’s recovered physically, he’s now focused on calling for the city to make all Pride events safer.
“I just don’t think this should happen in San Francisco,” says Young. “I don’t think that an apparently homophobically motivated attack should take place in Pride. That those people who are there to protect the community failed to do their job. Feels like something that needs to be addressed.”
Young filed a complaint with the San Francisco Fire Department. An SFFD spokesperson tells KRON4 that they are looking into what occurred.
The San Francisco Police Department says they are investigating to see if this assault was hate-motivated.
The Dyke March is not a city-run or official SF Pride event. Organizers tell KRON4 that they hired their own emergency medical services (EMS) personnel to take care of people, but they were not aware of Young’s attack and are sorry to hear about it.
Source:: News San Francisco – KRON 4
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