A cousin of a
72-year-old gay man in Detroit whose death became a
national focus for gay rights advocates said Thursday she
rejects a medical examiner's finding that he died of
natural causes. Wayne County medical examiner
Carl Schmidt said Wednesday that Andrew Anthos died of
injuries likely suffered in a fall and that the
evidence did not support reports that he had been attacked.
Detroit police announced they were closing the case.
Anthos died
February 23, 10 days after relatives say he was beaten by a
young man who called him a gay slur, followed him off a city
bus, and hit him in the back of the head with what
Anthos thought was a pipe.
''If you want to
say he wasn't murdered, OK. But you can't say he wasn't
attacked, that it wasn't a hate crime,'' said Anthos's
cousin Athena Fedenis.
Fedenis, who
talked to Anthos in the hospital, said he was trying to help
a friend whose wheelchair had become stuck in a snow
bank when he was attacked.
Detroit police
spokesman Leon Rahmaan said investigators interviewed
Anthos and his friend, who told police he thought Anthos may
have been attacked but did not see it. The witness
heard a noise, turned, and saw Anthos on the ground,
Rahmaan said.
The witness
helped police create a composite sketch of the man he saw,
but no suspect has been found.
Fedenis also
disputes Schmidt's findings that Anthos's only injury was a
two-inch bruise on the back of his head. ''Could [Anthos]
have been wrong about the pipe? Probably. It could
have been the guy's fist,'' Fedenis said. ''But what
was the size of a softball behind his left ear? It was a
cut, a gash.... If he was never struck, this wouldn't have
happened.''
A message left
Thursday for Schmidt was not immediately returned.
Anthos was openly
gay but not a gay rights activist. Lawmakers,
reporters, and others in Lansing knew him for his 20-year
campaign to illuminate the state capitol dome in red,
white, and blue one night a year in honor of police
officers, veterans, and others.
In death, Anthos
has become a symbol in a campaign to amend federal and
state hate-crimes laws to protect gays.
The Triangle
Foundation, a gay rights advocacy group based in Detroit
that has been counseling the family, said the case should
remain open. It said that the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force is offering a $5,000 reward for information
leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
''We absolutely
believe that there was an attack based on [statements],
especially Mr. Anthos's account,'' said Melissa Pope, the
group's director of victim services. ''It was based on
the fact that he was gay and therefore a hate crime.''
However, the
American Family Association of Michigan in a statement
called on Detroit police to investigate who may have been
involved in the filing of what the Midland,
Mich.-based conservative group called ''the
filing of a false police report.'' (Jeff Karoub, AP)