Subway attack on gay man left him afraid to publicly show affection
A hate crime victim was so rattled by a homophobic bigot’s attack in a Manhattan subway station he was left afraid to show signs of affection with his boyfriend in public.
Elliot Blankenship, 22, said he did not think twice about helping the man who wound up attacking him. The stranger asked to borrow Blankenship’s cell phone to text someone.
Blankenship said he was on his way back home to Brooklyn after visiting his boyfriend about 2 a.m. on Nov. 15 when the jarring episode unfolded on the D train platform of the 57th St.-Seventh Ave. station.
On Dec. 24, cops released a surveillance image of the suspect and asked the public’s help identifying him and tracking him down. No arrests have been made.
The stranger had a phone number on a slip of paper in his wallet and claimed it belonged to a woman he was in a relationship with — and asked Blankenship to text her and ask for her help.
“He was in a bad situation and was bedraggled,” Blankenship said of his attacker.
When the woman sent a response brushing him off, the stranger took Blankenship’s phone. That’s when he saw the photo on his lock screen of the victim and his boyfriend.
The image set the man off, and he called Blankenship a “f---ing f----t.”
“He didn’t punch me directly and kind of just swung and cracked the side of my head,” Blankenship recounted.
“I froze up. I didn’t really know what to do. I kind of slid to the ground against the metal column and he kept hitting me, and then for whatever reason stopped and walked away.”
Blankenship, overcome with rage, ran after his attacker, screaming, “So I’m a f----t, and I’m the f----t that is going to f---ing kill you!”
“Then I stopped and realized how I looked,” Blankenship said. “I just started crying, that gasping awful crying when it just comes at you all at once and hits you in the chest.”
Blankenship suffered a split lip but didn’t go to the hospital. MTA workers took him to a booth, where they called police.
In the days after, Blankenship was afraid to take the train late at night and started leaving his boyfriend’s place earlier than usual. Both he and his boyfriend are transgender and he was afraid that public displays of affection would make them a target of more violence.
“I kept wondering if there was going to be someone who sees this, and sees two men sharing affection, and decides to hurt me or, worse, hurt him,” he said.
“I think he does need help, whether that’s counseling, housing or therapy,” he said of his attacker. “It’s depressing to think about the system chewing him up and spitting him out and he’s right back where he started.”
Cops ask anyone with info to call Crime Stoppers, (800) 577TIPS. All calls will be confidential.