Local filmmaker and former city council candidate and monorail activist Grant Cogswell and a friend were attacked in Belltown last night in what appeared to be a gay-bashing that sent both men to the hospital.
At about 1:30 this morning, Cogswell says, he and a friend (who was in drag) were leaving a party at the Free Sheep Foundation in Belltown when a group of men in a late-model, red Dodge Magnum wagon began harassing them. One of the four men in the car shouted "you fucking faggots," at Cogswell and his friend. (Cogswell says his friend is straight and he is "mostly straight".) Cogswell yelled back “go back to Yakima if you don’t like seeing people in drag."
The car stopped and as the four men piled out, Cogswell says he sat down on the sidewalk, hoping to avoid a physical confrontation. "I don’t know how we’d have outrun these four dudes and I didn’t want to square off in fisticuffs," he says.
When the men approached Cogswell, he says, he asked them, "Guys, what's up? There's four of you [and] my friend's in high heels." Cogswell says he spoke briefly with one of the men before one of them attacked him, kneeing him in the face several times.
Cogswell ran out into the street, turned back and saw the men were attacking his friend. Bystanders approached the group of men, who then jumped back in the car and drove away.
Cogswell and his friend were taken to the hospital, where Cogswell received five stitches in his cheek, and doctors found that his right orbital bone—one of the bones around the eye socket—had been fractured and his front teeth badly chipped. Cogswell says there's a possibility that his fractured orbital bone could pinch a nerve or a muscle and require surgery. Cogswell's friend had with scrapes and bruises.
Cogswell was only able to give police a vague description of his attackers, but he says the man who kicked him was about 5'8 and Hispanic, wearing a white T-shirt. Cogswell says the attacker was accompanied by two tall black men—one of whom was wearing a blue jacket—and a tall white man with brown hair.
In the last year, there have been a number of recent violent attacks in Belltown, but Cogswell—who used to live in the neighborhood—says he's never seen anything like this happen.
I'll update with info about the SPD investigation when it becomes available.