Thomas Breen photo
Chief Jacobson and Asst. Chief Ettienne at Thursday's presser.
City detectives are investigating an alleged late-night assault on York Street as a potential hate crime perpetrated by a group of white men who beat up a Hispanic man while shouting racial slurs at him.
Police Chief Karl Jacobson and Assistant Police Chief Bert Ettienne described that incident during a Thursday morning press conference held on the front steps of police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.
Jacobson and Ettienne said that a 25-year-old Hispanic man from New Haven and two his friends were walking by 284 York St. downtown at around 12:16 a.m. Saturday when they crossed paths with a group of up to five white men.
“There was a brief bump,” Ettienne said, “and there was words exchanged, and at that point, they assaulted him.”
Jacobson and Ettienne said that, according to the victim, two white men assaulted him and hurled “racial slurs” at him as they did so. Based on videos that the police department have received from Yale University and a civilian witness, “there is a group of possibly five white males in total” who were involved, Jacobson said.
“This may be a hate crime,” the chief continued. “We’re handling it like it is. We’re investigating it fully.”
Jacobson said that, when police responded to a 911 dispatch early Saturday morning, they didn’t find the victim at the scene. Instead, they found him at the hospital, which he had gotten to by taking an Uber.
“He has some serious injuries,” Jacobson said. “He possibly has a broken jaw.” The victim is not still at the hospital as of Thursday.
The top cops said that city police are working with Yale police on the investigation.
The Yale Daily News first broke the news of this alleged attack in this article from Tuesday. The article links to a GoFundMe page written by the victim’s girlfriend. Jacobson said during the press conference that the victim is not a Yale student, while the victim’s girlfriend is.
The victim’s girlfriend wrote on the GoFundMe page that she and her boyfriend were walking home by Yale’s campus when they ran into a group of five or six “young white men” who “immediately became aggressive and violent.”
“These boys yelled racial slurs toward him (“sp*c” and the “n‑word”) and began punching him in the face. My partner tried to ask why they were swinging at him and calling him these horrible names, and this angered them even more,” she continued. “Two boys within the group began punching him in the face at the same time. Once all the attention was drawn towards my partner who was on the ground bleeding from his head and face, the group of boys disappeared.”
She went on to write that a “kind group of Yale students” saw them sitting on the pavement, came over to help, called an EMT, stopped the bleeding, and ultimately took him to the emergency room.
Police HQ at 1 Union Ave.
I get it, the Victim is not a Yale student but the girl friend is, why is this story getting press again, oh because the girlfriend is a Entitled Yale student. Didn’t we go through enough with the Yale officer involved shooting, as a tax payer I pay NHPD salaries to do their jobs which they do well, Yale PD stay in your lane, and police the Yale police the students at $90 thousand and more a year. To my New Haven Community becareful with Yale police, they over the years have violated new haveners civil rights and abused the black community hence the reason for the color change on their vehicles, blue and white, because their cruisers were the same Cole as NHPD and they often would pull over new haven Residents and harass the homeless and the parolees living at the YMCA pretending to be new haven cops although the are Yale cops. You want to be a new haven cop come to the department at $65K.