Early last Wednesday morning, two Georgetown graduates were assaulted on their way to join the crowd celebrating President-elect Barack Obama’s (D) election in front of the White House. An intoxicated man allegedly attacked the two men as they walked past the Capitol Hilton where the Republican National Committee held its election night party.
According to Metropolitan Police Department’s police report, at 1:15 a.m. the attacker took a rainbow gay pride flag that Steven Kensinger (COL `08) was carrying, and when Kensinger attempted to retrieve the flag, the attacker choked him.
“When I tried to grab [the flag] away from him, he started hitting me, trying to attack me,” Kensinger said in an interview with an ABC7 News crew that caught the end of the attack on film. “He was very aggressive and very threatening, and it definitely scared me.”
Kensinger later wrote in an email that he has been advised not to speak to the media while the investigation into the attack continues.
Zack Pesavento (SFS `08), who was walking with Kensinger at the time of the attack, told ABC7 that the attacker, allegedly a Republican, seemed intoxicated and upset about the election.
“It was really violent, and it was really frightening, and it seemed like he was really trying to hurt [Kesinger],” Pesavento said in the interview.
MPD’s incident report for the attack classified it as a simple assault with no indication that it was a suspected hate crime, but Commander Brett Parson, head of MPD’s special liaison units, including the gay and lesbian liaison unit, said that they are investigating the nature of the attack.
“The case has been flagged as a potential hate crime, meaning the police department is investigating it as such,” Parson said, noting that MPD is focusing on the role that political identity or sexual identity may have played in the attack.
According to ABC7, Kensinger and Pesavento said that their attacker claimed not to know that the rainbow flag he took represented gay rights when the police questioned him.
The incident report described the suspect as a 28-year-old white male, six feet tall, with brown hair and blue eyes.
Parson said that once MPD finishes its investigation, it will present the facts of the case to the U.S. attorney’s office, which will then decide whether to take the case further and prosecute the alleged attacker.
