Three more college students have been charged in connection with the brutal beating of a gay man near Salisbury University, in an October attack that now involves at least 15 people.
The students are facing hate crime charges after allegedly targeting the victim for being gay, Salisbury police said.
Police arrested 12 Salisbury students last month, saying the students used a dating app to lure the victim to an off-campus apartment and then attacked him.
The attack left the victim with a broken rib and extensive bruising.
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The targeted man went to an apartment “for the purpose of having sexual intercourse” with someone he believed was 16, according to the documents. The man’s age is not included in court documents. Under Maryland law, the legal age of consent is 16 in most cases.
Shortly after he walked into the apartment, a group of “college-aged males appeared from the back bedrooms” and forced him onto a chair in the middle of the living room, police wrote. They slapped, punched, kicked and spit on him while calling him derogatory names and a homophobic slur, preventing him from leaving, according to police.
Police later obtained footage from a phone belonging to one of the charged students.
That footage also showed the victim’s car leaving the scene. Police used his license plate number to identify and contact the man, who said “he never notified law enforcement of the attack in fear for his safety due to retaliation and being threatened by the attackers,” the documents say.
The 12 students initially charged in the case were suspended from Salisbury University, school officials said.
University President Carolyn Ringer Lepre said she was creating a taskforce focused on LGBTQ+ inclusiveness.
"Our community is reeling from an act of visceral hate," Lepre said in a statement posted to social media. "We are witnessing a campus filled with anguish that something so unspeakable could happen from within the community that we all love."
Most of the students involved are members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. They have since been kicked out.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
