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Second Degree Murder –Police Refuse to Discuss Motive Anti-Gay Outbursts Said Growing at Gallaudet University |
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Compiled By GayToday
 Washington, D.C.—An 18-year old student, Tom Minch, has been charged
by District of Columbia police in the beating death of Eric Plunkett, a 19-year old
openly gay freshman with cerebral palsy who'd been attending the famed Gallaudet
University, the nation's foremost institution of learning for the deaf.
Lesbian and gay students at Gallaudet told a delegation from the Human Rights Campaign that the Gallaudet campus had recently been a witness to anti-gay outbursts. Prior to Minch's arrest, Manny Fernandez and Arthur Santana had written in the Washington Post: "Fear had been so palpable before Plunkett's death that when many heard that a Gallaudet student had been killed, 'our first thought was that it was a hate crime,'…the feeling among gay students was that the hostility had finally 'come out into the open.' "
Plunkett's body, with injuries to his head and neck, had been discovered in his private dormitory room by a Gallaudet official. Plunketts' friends and associates in his home state of Minnesota, recalled him as one who'd worked indefatigably to overcome immense physical adversities, including the cerebral palsy. He'd defied all stereotypes held about those who are hard of hearing, managing both football and basketball teams at the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf. |
