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A second suspect has been arrested in connection with an attack on two transgender filmmakers in New York City.
David Gonzalez, 34, turned himself in to police Tuesday night, the New York Post reports. He was charged with two counts each of felony assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment. He has a long record of arrests going back to 2002, the paper reports.
A woman accused of participating in the attack, Paola Custodio, 24, was arrested at the crime scene June 29, and she is charged with felony assault and aggravated harassment, both as hate crimes, as well, according to the New York Daily News.
The filmmakers, Latinx activists Norma Ureiro and Bianey Garcia, were making a video about violence against trans women early in the morning of June 29 in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. Both of the suspects are accused of attacking Ureiro and Garcia with what the victims described as pepper spray while making anti-LGBTQ remarks. Police continue to call the substance an unknown liquid.
“Doing a documentary about trans violence & police harassment My sister Norma Ureiro and I we just got pepper sprayed at 82nd St & Roosevelt Av by a transphobic woman,” Garcia wrote on Twitter shortly after the assault. “She offended us by calling us fucking fagots, fucking whores ect. (Enough is enough).”
“This time it was only pepper spray, but next time it could be a knife or a gun,” Ureiro added at a press conference.
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