WSB-TV Atlanta aired the horrific story of a man pouring boiling water on a sleeping gay couple. Why? Because they’re gay.
21-year-old Marquez Tolbert and his boyfriend, Anthony Gooden, were severely burned last month when Gooden’s mother’s boyfriend poured boiling water all over them. They were sound asleep in Gooden’s College Park apartment, where he resided with his mother.
48-year old Martin Blackwell, the water pourer, wasn’t living in the apartment, but a frequent visitor. He’s now in the Fulton County Jail, charged with two counts of aggravated battery, but doesn’t seem to be very remorseful as he told the police:
“They’ll be all right. It was just a little hot water on them.”
The ”little hot water,” however, caused second and third-degree burns along Tolbert’s neck, back and arms. He spent 10 days at Grady Memorial Hospital undergoing surgery that took skin from his thigh to replace skin on his back.
Tolbert said he can barely think straight because he feels burning and the stinging everywhere:
”The pain doesn’t let you sleep. It’s just, like, it’s excruciating, 24 hours a day, and it doesn’t go anywhere […] It doesn’t dial down, anything. It’s just there.”
He described the events that night, saying:
“Martin pulled me up and said, ‘Get out of my house with all that gay […] I couldn’t stop screaming.”
A friend of Tolbert’s family introducing herself as Vicky, described how they had to go door to door searching for help. The first doors they knocked on, the tenants would not help them.
Tolbert believes he carries scars of hate. An Atlanta Police Department LGBT liaison assisted in the case. Even though hate crimes laws don’t exist in the state of Georgia, the liaison said federal hate crime charges are a possibility in the case, and an upcoming hearing will address that.
Meanwhile, Vicky has created a GoFundMe-page called “Marquez’s Burn Recovery Fund” asking for donations to help Tolbert with medical bills, prescriptions, supplies, and everyday expenses since he is unable to work at the moment, and will have to wear compression garments 23 hours/day for two years. Gooden got out of the hospital on Friday.
Featured image screen grab from video.
