A Corona resident was arrested early Wednesday morning on hate crime charges for the assault of a couple, who were the first gay men to tie the knot at West Point, according to police.
On Aug. 2 at about 2:30 p.m., Daniel and Larry Lennox-Choate were inside the Newsstand store at 186 Prince St. in SoHo when 57-year-old Thomas Clabough of Corona entered the store to buy beer, cops said.
Clabough then started to shout anti-gay statements at the couple, which led to a verbal dispute. According to authorities, the suspect then struck Daniel in the face, causing minor injuries to his mouth. The 30-year-old later refused medical attention at the scene, police said.
According to a post on Larry’s Facebook, he intervened after his husband was attacked.
“He left covered in his own blood with his tail between his legs after I handled the situation and tossed him in the street like the coward loser he is,” the post said.
Clabough, who fled the scene on his bicycle, was arrested Wednesday reportedly near his Junction Boulevard home and charged with assault as a hate crime and attempted assault as a hate crime.
In 2013, Daniel and Larry Lennox-Choate were the first same-sex male couple to marry at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from where they both graduated.
A few days following the attack, Larry wrote another post on his Facebook thanking everyone for their support and concerns, and also urged for people to reach out and call for zero tolerance policies aiming “to make good on the promise that all men (and women, of course) actually are created equal in this country.”
“Let’s be the generation that says ENOUGH! There are hundreds of non-violent ways to send a clear message that this sort of behavior is intolerable and that we just won’t take it any longer,” he wrote.
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