A couple who said they were attacked early Monday at a restaurant on Roosevelt Row for being gay will hold a press conference in Phoenix on Saturday.
According to a statement released Friday, two Arizona men said they were attacked by a group of men at The Golden Margarita nightclub because of their sexual orientation.
An Instagram post that garnered more than 600 likes from the account called gayprideapparel with more than 44,000 followers shared a video from one of the men that gave some details about what happened.
“Tonight everyone knows it was (one of the men) birthday and my anniversary, so we went downtown,” said one man in the video. “Me and my husband were attacked by a lot of straight men tonight.”
One of the men then shows the other in the video with blood stains on his shirt.
“One of the people who attacked us had a gun that he wanted to pull out until my friend started yelling for help. People were laughing instead of helping,” the Instagram post said.
The two men and their boyfriend called the police after they said the security of the restaurant “did not protect them,” according to the West Valley NAACP and the Arizona Unity Collective, a group of civil rights activist organizations in Arizona.
The four Phoenix police officers who responded to the incident were dismissive, the statement said, adding, “This was not a bar fight.” The Instagram post said the back of one of the men’s heads was swollen and the other’s face was swollen with a possibly broken nose.
“Members of the Arizona LGBTQ community continue to be physically assaulted while elected officials do nothing to protect them, their rights and their lives,” said the NAACP and Unity Collective statement.
A Phoenix police spokesman said police responded to a fight at a store near Fourth and Roosevelt Streets where the Golden Margarita is located around 1 a.m. Monday and found two men with facial injuries.
Phoenix fire service personnel provided medical care to the two men, said Sgt. Mercedes Fortune, a spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department.
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Fortune said the two men were compromised and unable to provide details of the fight when police tried to gather information from them. Police said one of the men pointed at a woman and said she had beaten him.
The woman told police that the two men were sitting in an area reserved for a private party and that the fight began after the men she said were drunk refused to leave, according to Fortune .
No description of the suspect was given and no arrests were made, Fortune said.
The Golden Margarita said on Instagram that an incident occurred across the street from her restaurant involving two separate parties who were patrons of the restaurant that same evening. The Post also said the incident was “neither racial nor sexual bias, and our staff were not involved.”
“We sincerely apologize for all the actions that recently took place in the Golden Margarita restaurant over the past weekend,” said the restaurant’s statement.
The restaurant also conducted an internal investigation involving the restaurant owners and management to “fix” problems and prevent them from reoccurring.
“Here at The Golden Margarita we attach great importance to an open environment in which all people from all walks of life are welcome. We do not discriminate and will never discriminate against anyone, be it on the basis of their sexual orientation or their racist background,” says the Explanation.
A man who says he is a restaurant manager and responsible for customer relations in the incident posted a video using the username albertlmeeks and said the fight took place across the street as well as across the street from the restaurant.
“In this situation we could all have done better, but when things happen outside of our venue, we are not liable for anything that happens outside of our venue,” he said in the video.
The man who said he was a black gay man said he had reached out to everyone involved but had not heard from anyone until Thursday.
The two men who were attacked will hold a press conference outside the Golden Margarita on Saturday at 1 p.m. in collaboration with the NAACP and the Unity Collective to discuss the incident and the victimization of the LGBTQ community.
Local, state, and national resources for the LGBTQ community can be found on the Arizona Department of Health website.
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