Ninth Suspect Arrested in Bronx Hate Attacks

New York City police apprehended Ruddy Vargas-Perez, the ninth suspect in the brutal antigay attacks against a 30-year-old gay man and two teens intimately involved with him in the Bronx.

According to NY 1, police detained Vargas-Perez on Monday after he failed to turn himself in last week for the attack carried out by the Latin King Goonies gang on October 3. Other suspects, aged 16 to 23, were arraigned Sunday on hate-crime charges including kidnapping, robbery, and sodomy. They are due back in court Thursday.

"One 17-year-old victim, who was a member of the gang, was sodomized with a plunger handle," reported NY 1. "The 30-year-old man was later sodomized by a small baseball bat, and the second 17-year-old boy was forced to burn him with cigarettes.

"The 30-year-man's older brother was also allegedly beaten and robbed by the gang."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg decried the attacks in a speech Monday evening to the 30th annual Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays New York City Awards Dinner. He said that the perpetrators would be "spared no mercy" and pledged to continue reinforcing the antibullying policy in the city's public schools.

"Let me be clear, these incidents are completely unacceptable," said Bloomberg. "They're intolerable in a city in which tolerance is what defines us. They're unacceptable in a city in which embracing our differences is what makes us strong. Because when any New Yorker is attacked because of who they are or who they love, the fabric that binds us together is torn. That's why these attacks are attacks on us all - and why they can never, ever be allowed. Especially when it comes to our kids."