A new article about Kevin today:
The New York Times
June 12, 2006
Fourth Man Is Arrested After Attack on a Dance Recording Artist in the East Village
By KAREEM FAHIM and SARAH GARLAND
A fourth man was arrested yesterday in connection with the beating of a Manhattan singer who the police said was attacked by a gang of young men who kicked him, screamed anti-gay slurs at him and broke his jaw as the singer walked through the East Village early Saturday.
The man arrested by the police yesterday is Gregory Archie, 18, who lives on 21st Street, about seven blocks from where the attack took place. Two 20-year-old men and one 16-year-old boy were arrested on Saturday night in connection with the beating.
Mr. Archie and the three others were being questioned by detectives from the Police Department's hate crimes unit at the 13th Precinct station yesterday. All four have been charged with first-degree assault as a hate crime, the police said.
It was not immediately clear whether the police were seeking anyone else regarding the attack.
The singer, Kevin Aviance, was walking home about 1 a.m. Saturday after leaving a bar on East 13th Street when he was attacked. In an interview in his hospital room yesterday, Mr. Aviance, who has recorded several chart-topping hits, said he might have been attacked by only four people. He had previously told his publicist that as many as six or seven people had beat him unconscious.
The three arrested Saturday are Akino George, 20, of Townsend Avenue in the Bronx; Jarell Sears, 20, of Newark; and a 16-year-old Manhattan boy. The police had previously identified Mr. Sears as Sears Jarell.
Mr. Aviance, 38, said that he had not yet been shown pictures of the four suspects. He said that the thing he remembered most was the shoes. "They were wearing Air Force sneakers," he said, referring to a popular model made by Nike. "I can still hear their feet in my head."
In his room at Beth Israel Medical Center, surrounded by friends and dozens of roses, Mr. Aviance recounted the attack, saying that it started when one of the men shouted at him, using anti-gay slurs. "You're not diesel," someone shouted, in obscenity-laced language. "Who do you think you are?"
The men threw trash bags at him, and then one of them threw a spray can that missed him, prompting laughter from the other men, he said. "His friends are making fun of him," Mr. Aviance said. "He's angry." The young man who had thrown the can then punched Mr. Aviance, and the other men joined in the attack. As the men attacked him, Mr. Aviance recalled hearing people yelling at the attackers to stop. When it was over and he was lying on the street, a man named Tim approached him and walked him to the hospital. "He said, 'You're safe now,' " Mr. Aviance said.
When he was attacked, he was wearing black shorts, a black hooded T-shirt and black boots and was carrying a large bag.
In the more than 15 years he has lived in New York, Mr. Aviance said, he had never been attacked. A native of Richmond, Va., he grew up with supportive parents and seven siblings who chose different paths "” one became a pilot, another a preacher, a third an architect, he said. "A freak is really what I wanted to be," he said. "A revered freak."
In 1990, he moved to Miami, where he said he was adopted by a group of like-minded people into a collective known as the House of Aviance. He gave parties there and in Washington. He changed his name. After he moved to New York in 1992, Mr. Aviance became a familiar figure on the cabaret scene, a performance artist who recorded several dance hits and collaborated with stars, including Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson, he said.
Clarence Patton, the executive director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, said Mr. Aviance had performed at many of his organization's functions. "He really has, in his time in New York and D.C., become a community figure," Mr. Patton said. "You can't deny that the man has a presence."
The police were not immediately able to provide statistics on the number of anti-gay bias crimes this year, but community activists said they often noticed a spike in June, in the weeks before the Gay Pride Parade, which is coming up in New York City on June 25.
The 16-year-old whom the police charged in the attack had been in his share of trouble since his mother died two years ago, said his grandmother, who lives with the teenager in an East Harlem apartment.
His mother became sick after a boyfriend abused her in front of the boy, and she died after having seizures, his grandmother said. "He's a good kid," she said.
The boy's grandmother said that on the night of the attack, she believed that he had gone to the beach with friends. When she went to the police station house yesterday, detectives told her about the charges against her grandson.
"I asked them if it was serious and they said very," she said. "I have a lot of prayers. I'm going to church right now to pray for him."
Mr. Patton said the attack on such a high-profile figure was likely to raise fears in the gay community.
"People will say: Here it is. Kevin Aviance in the East Village in boy's clothes, in a place that's supposed to be ours, getting beat up," he said.