hate crime

Teen thought he was meeting a man from a gay dating site. Instead, he was burned alive.

via Shutterstock

An 18-year-old man from Jamacia continues to recover after a horrifying, violent attack that saw him beaten, kidnapped, and set ablaze.

Local newspaper The Gleaner reports that the victim ventured to Montego Bay under the impression he was meeting a man from a dating site for a date. When he arrived, the man from the site appeared with two other men who robbed the victim of his ATM card, wallet and cell phone. The three men then assaulted the victim, leaving him bound as they went to withdraw cash from a nearby ATM.

The three men returned shortly thereafter, unsuccessful in withdrawing the money. Then they forced him to transfer money into his account for them to withdraw. They also continued to assault the victim, cutting off part of his penis. The three men, who were also drinking at the time, doused the victim in liquor, set him on fire, and left him for dead.

“He is a very lucky young man because although they left him in a critical condition, he managed to make his way to a security checkpoint in the community where they assisted him to the hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition,” a local police officer told The Gleaner.

At the time of this writing, police have not made the names of any potential suspects in the case public.

Related: Man arrested for beating couple, police dog in apparent hate crime

This isn’t the first attack of this kind in Jamacia, a country that still harbors harsh, anti-queer laws. The same officer quoted in the story recalled another incident in which a gay man was targeted by violent criminals via a gay dating app.

“There was a similar incident in 2020, where the now-deceased, 43-year-old Allie Jackson, who worked as a warehouse manager, went on a similar gay dating site and hooked up with an alleged single gay companion, who lured him to the retirement community,” the officer remembered. “Jackson, unlike this young man, was not so lucky, because on January 29, 2020, he left to meet his supposedly gay date during his lunch break, but he never returned to work as he went missing. One week after he was reported missing, the police got some leads and discovered Jackson’s X-Trail motor vehicle, which was set on fire and abandoned in Retirement. This led to one suspect being taken into custody.”

Jackson’s body was later found in a shallow grave near the retirement community. Two men were later charged with his murder.

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