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 Facts in Boy's Brutal Beating Chief Claims 16-Year Old was Drunk and that He Fell Down Teen Suffered 3 Broken Ribs, Black Eye, Burn Marks, Bruises |
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Compiled By GayToday
Rifle, Colorado-Police Chief Daryl Meisner says that four teens identified as attackers
by a sixteen year-old victim because they thought he was gay, are not to be regarded as suspects in the brutal beating the youth endured.
Kyle Skyock, who suffered large purple bruises on the front and back of his head, a circle of burn blisters on his left shoulder, a blackened right eye, three broken ribs, a foot-shaped bruise on his stomach, and another bruise described by a doctor as having the shape of a 2-by-4, was simply "drunk", according to Chief Meisner, and, according to the lawman's seemingly homophobic opinion, simply "fell down." The attack took place on February 10. The teen, beaten unconscious, was left face down on U.S. Route 6. Both Kyle and his mother, Sharlene, have attempted since that time to bring the perpetrators to justice, attempts pointedly rejected by Rifle's police department. Both the boy and his mother are living in fear. Citizens of Rifle, quoted in the Rocky Mountain News, believe that there has been a complete cover-up of the brutal beating. When Kyle's mother and other relatives were gathered around the boy's hospital bed the group openly identified his predicament with that of another such victim, "Matthew Shepard". Kyle had been asked by the boys, according to his own account, to "party" with them. He'd known one of the boys at school. Having nothing else to do, he accompanied them to local homes where they reportedly drank wine and smoked pot. The school mate who'd invited him to "party", said Kyle, then pointed to his car and said, "Let's go." Two sets of brothers got into the back seat and their car headed toward Interstate 70. The driver, Kyle noticed, used a cell phone to make a mysterious call. He smelled an odor which he'd first thought to be fingernail polish. The car then came to a stop. Kyle was yanked out and thrown to the ground. His attackers, he says, kicked him and repeatedly pushed his head into the tailgate, calling him "faggot," taking turns at beating on him, apparently with a bat.
Kyle, left to die in freezing weather, was found coatless the next morning by a local whose car had stalled. He was lying face down by a city limits sign and was taken to a hospital. A medical report indicated that a large round burn he'd suffered had been caused by "flame to flesh." The physician who wrote the report, Dr. Kurt Papenfus of Clagett Memorial Hospital in Rifle, said the boy's bruises appeared to have been "direct blows to the chest," A square on Kyle's stomach appeared to have been made by a 2-by-4 and the reddened blistering on his left shoulder was consistent with a burn, Papenfus wrote. "When I saw him at the time it looked like an assault," Papenfus said. Today, Police Chief Meisner claims he is still willing to talk to Kyle. "I certainly wouldn't want to close the door on someone walking in here with credible evidence," he told a reporter. Chief Meisner is unwilling, however, to blame Kyle's reported attackers. "How can we possibly make the quantum leap to say it was a hate crime or a bias crime in any way?" he asked. "We're bound by fact." A second doctor on whose word Chief Meisner relies, Rob Kurtzman, claims that Kyle had been "incredibly intoxicated" and that his injuries were "classic for a fall." Kurtzman, a forensic pathologist at Grand Junction's Community Hospital, says he thinks that Kyle's story of an attack is an attempt to bypass personal responsibility for his drunkenness and to blame it on others. |
