WATCH: Phoenix Shooting Under Investigation as Hate Crime

A witness says a gunman made antigay remarks before firing into a restaurant, striking one woman.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

August 24 2015 8:19 PM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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Police in Phoenix are investigating a shooting at a Mexican restaurant as a potential antigay hate crime, reports TV station KPNX.

Two groups of people got into a fight at Julioberto's about 3 a.m. today, and what started as a verbal altercation became physical as the parties took it outside, the station reports. One man left after making antigay remarks to the restaurant cashier, then returned with a gun and fired into the restaurant, shooting a woman in the hand, a witness said.

"He was talking [expletive] about us because we were gay," the witness, who asked not to be identified, told the station. "Someone else asked him, 'What's your problem?' and he didn't think twice. He ran away to his car and got [the] gun."

The woman, whose name was not disclosed, sustained non-life-threatening injuries, KPNX reports. Police are reviewing security camera video, which may have captured the shooting, and interviewing witnesses to the incident.

"We do have information that this was a possibility a bias incident, that it involved name-calling and things of that nature," Officer James Holmes told KPNX. "And so certainly we're going to investigate it with the information we have as a possibility."

Watch the station's report below.