A jury has convicted an Atlanta truck driver accused of pouring boiling water over two gay men as the couple slept in February.
The
jury deliberated for about 90 minutes Wednesday before finding Martin
Blackwell guilty of eight counts of aggravated battery and two counts of
aggravated assault, according to the Associated Press.
Blackwell was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The
48-year-old wasn’t charged with a hate crime because Georgia is one of
five states that do not have hate crime statutes. An FBI spokesman told Reuters that federal investigators are considering whether to charge Blackwell with a federal hate crime.
Anthony Gooden had told his family he was gay shortly before the
attack, which happened as Gooden slept on a mattress in his mother’s
living room next to Marquez Tolbert, according to the AP. The men had
been dating for about six weeks.
Blackwell, a long-haul trucker
who stayed at the house when he was in town, came in and saw the
two unconscious men lying next to each other.
He went to the
kitchen, pulled out a pot, filled it with water and set it to boil.
Moments later, he poured the scalding water over the men, The Washington Post reported
I woke up to the most unimaginable pain in my entire life,” Tolbert
said, sobbing frequently during his testimony, according to the AP. “I’m
wondering why I’m in so much pain. I’m wondering why I’m wet. I don’t
understand what’s going on.”
Then Blackwell allegedly yanked him off the mattress and yelled, “Get out of my house with all that gay,” Tolbert recalled to WSBTV.
“They
were stuck together like two hot dogs … so I poured a little hot water
on them and helped them out,” he said to police, according to the
incident report. “… They’ll be alright. It was just a little hot water.”
Blackwell
claimed the two men were having sex when he poured water on them.
Vickie Gray, a friend of Tolbert’s, told the news station that’s not
true; they were asleep after a long day of work — not that the alleged
attack would have been justified in any case, she noted.
Tolbert must now wear compression garments 23 hours a day for the next
two years, Gray wrote in an email to The Post, and is attending weekly
counseling and physical therapy sessions to deal with his emotional and
physical scars. It’s difficult for him to go outside because sunlight
exacerbates the pain of his burns.
Gooden, who was burned even more severely, was in a medically induced
coma for several weeks, Gray said. According to his GoFundMe page, more
than 60 percent of his body was burned, and he had to undergo skin graft
surgery to repair damage to his face, neck, back, arms, chest and head.
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