Carl Blea and husband Marc Lange refute police’s claim it was a “robbery gone wrong.”
A gay man from Palm Springs was shot while holding hands with his husband while the pair were on vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
A bullet went through real-estate agent Carl Blea’s buttocks and exited through his thigh, according to the Desert Sun.
Blea and husband Marc Lange were returning from a night out at about 2:30am, walking toward the condo they were staying at, when a man yelled something at them. Blea then noticed the unnamed suspect, who had a tattoo on his face, pull out a gun.
The couple believe they were targeted because they were gay and holding hands in public. They say police are being uncooperative and trying to downplay it as a hate crime. Local news reports have referred to the attack as an attempted robbery, a description Lange strongly refutes.
“This was not a robbery went bad. It was a hate crime as Carl Blea and I were walking hand in hand,” he wrote on Facebook. “We never spoke to the man who shot us. He yelled at us and then pulled out a gun and shot at us. This is not correct. We told 3 different set of police officials the same story. There were no witnesses, the street was empty.”
According to local LGBT group Letra S, there was an average of six homicides of LGBT people a month in Mexico between 2014 and 2016.
