Jose Escobar Menendez – Photo: Ricky Alvarenga/GoFundMe
The friend of a Northern Virginia man who was killed last week claims he may have been targeted due to his sexual orientation.
Police found the body of 24-year-old Jose Escobar Menendez, of Winchester, on the roadway along Emerald Point Terrace, near Winding Road, in Sterling, Virginia, around 3:30 a.m. last Wednesday.
Authorities have not yet revealed the cause of death in the case.
“This remains a very active investigation, and at this time the motive is unclear,” Kraig Troxell, a spokesman for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, told the Loudoun Times-Mirror. “There is no indication there is a threat to the community.”
No information on a possible suspect has been released by police at this time.
But a woman, going by the Twitter name @lesliecobenas, who describes herself as Menendez’s friend, says he was gay and that she fears he may have been the victim of a hate crime.
In a now-deleted tweet, she claimed that Menendez’s body was in “very bad shape,” but declined to say how he died.
“We know it was a homicide, but no one has any idea what his whereabouts were that night or with whom,” she said in the deleted tweet.
“He was murdered & we believe it was due to his sexuality…. We think he met up with someone off of a dating app.”
The woman told the Times-Mirrorin an interview that Menendez was an “amazing friend.”
“He was so sweet — always happy and cheerful,” she said. “He was always that person to hype you up. He just wanted everyone to have a good time.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up for Menendez’s funeral costs, and had raised more than $12,000 as of Monday evening.
The organizer of the page, Ricky Alvarenga, says he is a cousin of Menendez and has asked for respect and privacy for the family.
“We are as a family completely devastated and broken and the last thing that we would ever expect was to have to be making accommodations for this tragedy,” he wrote.
“Which this is the reason I am fundraising to help out the most that we can during the time that was already devastating for us.
“Please, we appreciate any help and from the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much. #JusticeForJose.”
In one of the stranger crime sprees of Pride Month, a masked man on an electric unicycle is reportedly stealing Pride flags across Longmont, Colorado.
Since Memorial Day weekend -- just ahead of Pride Month -- the man has vandalized homes by bending flagpoles and tearing down flags.
Sheryl Colaur, one of the victims, told the Longmont Daily Times-Call that at least 10 -- and possibly as many as 15 -- of her neighbors in Longmont's Harvest Junction Village neighborhood have had their Pride flags stolen, allegedly by the same man.
Chris Kostka, a gay man visiting Provincetown, Massachusetts, was walking along Bradford Street between 1 and 2 a.m. on Monday, June 30, when, near Howland Street at the town’s eastern end, three men shoved him to the pavement and began kicking him while yelling anti-gay slurs.
"All of a sudden I just feel myself getting pushed to the ground," Kostka told Boston NBC affiliate WBTS-CD. "I fly forward and I turn. I see three guys, and of course, I'm stunned from just being thrown to the pavement, and I just cover my face, go into a fetal position as I'm getting kicked and getting called some gay slurs."
In the early morning hours of May 23, Sinners and Saints, an LGBTQ bar catering mainly to Queer and trans communities of color in Adams Morgan, was broken into.
Intruders shattered the glass on the front door, and after gaining entry, stole bottles of alcohol, shut off the bar's electricity, and left the back door ajar.
They also scrawled a homophobic slur on a wall.
An employee from the restaurant above the bar was the first to notice the break-in after going downstairs to investigate why the building was without power.
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