They say no good deed goes unpunished, and that was certainly true for Marcel Schoeman.
The 49-year-old personal trainer from London was biking home from the gym on December 5 when he saw a young mother being harassed by a motorist on the street.
“He was [being] a bully,” Schoeman tells the Evening Standard. “She was saying ‘leave me alone.’ He blocked her way.”
So Schoeman did what any good samaritan would do. He got off his bicycle and went to intervene.
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“It was just an instinct,” Schoeman says. “I thought ‘not on my watch.’ I just said something. He started to get out of the car. He was being aggressive. It felt very dangerous.”
The man started hurling antigay slurs at him.
“He called me a faggot and a queer,” Schoeman recalls. “Then he drove off. The girl turned to me and said ‘Thank you so much’. But then he came back.”
And that’s when things took a violent turn.
Moments after returning, the motorist revved his engine then tried running over Schoeman.
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“I saw the sign pole and I jumped behind it,” Schoeman recalls with horror. “And that’s when I hurt my knee but he didn’t actually hit me.”
After narrowly escaping being hit, he called police. But the motorist had already sped off before they arrived.
“I am a bit messed up about it,” Schoeman says. “It was really freaky.”
A spokeswoman for the LGBTQ rights group Stonewall told the Evening Standard: “Incidents like this and recent crime figures show that lesbian, gay, bi and trans people still face high levels of hate crime on our streets and demonstrate how much there is for us to do before everyone is free to be themselves, wherever they live.”
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Jason Mc
What a nice guy! ð??
Ummmm Yeah
Was the drive a muslim/arab? How much of that high level of anti-gay crimes are the muslims Britain has allowed to flood in?
Tom Remillard
Crazy people everywhere
Bob LaBlah
Considering how they drive on the wrong side of the street over there I am sure this happens at least 100 times per day. They really do need to look into correcting that problem.
Benny
How did the driver know Schoeman was gay?
What the driver did was wrong of course.
But I don’t understand how this was a crime towards LGBTQ.
Juanjo
@Ummmm Yeah: That is what is knowing as a complete red herring.
scotshot
@Ummmm Yeah: Thanks for the hate speech.
Wahaca
This is awful – Marcel is a lovely guy. I hope someone managed to get down some details for the driver and he gets some justice – common assault on the woman, a hate crime and attempted murder, proper scum.
o.codone
NOT an ant-gay hate crime. WTF. Anyone who helped would have gotten the same treatment. Keep it real please.
scotshot
@o.codone: @Ummmm Yeah: You two need to get together.
Giancarlo85
@o.codone: Again you consistently prove how much of an idiot you are.
Redmage
@Wahaca: First off the term “hate crime” is just dumb. If someone walks into my house and shoots me, because he wanted to steal stuff from me- or he thinks I cut him off on the road.. That in itself is hateful… It doesn’t nor should it be elevated to a “hate crime” if people later find out that I am gay.
This story only proves that some people are crazy assholes in the world.. Its not showing an “anti-gay” “hate crime”.. Do we even know if this guy who was nearly run over is gay? Did this random lunatic know he was gay? Calling some random guy you’re having it out with in the streets “fag” or “homo” is not anti-gay, nor a hate crime.. Saying something like “all homosexuals should be exterminated”, and then actually doing so, however is.