UPDATE: Robbery classified as hate crime
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Two suspects in jail for beating in Oak Lawn

Jonathan Gunter, left and Bobby Singleton.

Police have identified the victim of a possible gay-bashing that occurred late Wednesday or early Thursday in Oak Lawn, but the man’s medical condition remains unknown.

Janice Crowther, a senior corporal for the Dallas Police Department, said Friday morning that the victim had been identified as Jimmy Dean. Crowther said Dean’s age was unknown, but a man who witnessed the crime estimated that Dean in his late 30s or early 40s.

Dean was brutally beaten at about midnight Wednesday on Dickason Avenue between Throckmorton and Reagan streets, a block from the Cedar Springs strip.
Two suspects, who were initially apprehended by security guards from nearby gay nightclubs, have been arrested in connection with the crime. The suspects, 26-year-old Bobby Jack Singleton and 31-year-old Jonathan Russell Gunter, both of Garland, are charged with aggravated robbery. Singleton’s bond was set at $25,000, and Gunter’s bond was set at $100,000.

Crowther said Friday that police believe the primary motive for the attack was robbery. According to DPD reports, authorities recovered a Zippo lighter and a set of keys from the suspects that belonged to the victim.

“It’s being looked at from all avenues, as a possible hate crime and definitely a robbery,” Crowther said. “They [the suspects] did say that they robbed him because he was gay and they thought it would be easier to rob somebody because he’s gay.”
Crowther said authorities have only one eyewitness. The eyewitness, 48-year-old Michael Robinson, told Dallas Voice on Thursday that the suspects were shouting anti-gay epithets prior to and during the beating.

According to DPD reports, Singleton and Gunter beat Dean in the head and face with a 9mm handgun, in addition to kicking him with their feet.

Michael Robinson

“It was a hate crime is what it was,” said Robinson, who’d been walking with Dean shortly before the attack. “When he was stomping him in the face, he was saying gay epithets.”

Dean’s condition was unknown Friday morning. He was taken to Parkland Hospital by ambulance after the attack with what Robinson characterized as life-threatening injuries.

Crowther said Friday morning that Dean was still alive.

Because police weren’t able to identify Dean right away, he was not listed under his name at the hospital Friday morning, a spokeswoman for Parkland said.

“When I looked at him while he was laying on the ground, it was not good,” Robinson told Dallas Voice on Thursday. “It was just not good. He was gasping for breath. Blood was coming out of his mouth and nose. He was laying on his back, and his face had been stomped in.”

Capt. Steve Cooper, a security supervisor for three nearby gay clubs owned by Caven Enterprises, said he also believes the attack may have been a hate crime.

“They were going after him because he was gay,” Cooper said Friday.

Cooper, who works for Northridge Security Inc., said he and three other security officers apprehended the suspects and held them until police arrived.

Cooper said he thinks the suspects also had a knife, but he said he was unsure whether they used it to stab Dean. Crowther said she wasn’t aware of a knife being used in the crime. 

Robinson, the eyewitness, said he met the victim while walking home from Zini’s Pizzeria to his apartment on Reagan Street.

Robinson said the victim seemed intoxicated, and they exchanged greetings and began walking together and talking.

Robinson said he and the victim passed the suspects, who were walking on Dickason Avenue in the opposite direction. The suspects then turned around and came up behind them.

Robinson, who’s gay, said when he turned to confront the two men, they called Robinson and the victim “gay-ass motherfuckers” and “dick-sucking punks.”

Robinson started walking away and encouraged the victim to follow him, but the suspects eventually got between Robinson and the victim.

Robinson said when he realized what was about to happen, he ran inside his apartment to retrieve a knife. By the time he returned, the victim was lying on his back, and the suspects were beating him.

When Robinson approached them with the knife, one of the suspects pulled out a gun, he said. When the armed security guards arrived, the suspect dropped the gun, and the guards apprehended them. 

Cooper, the security captain, said he had seen the suspects pull up in a truck and park behind the Black-Eyed Pea Restaurant about an hour before the attack. Cooper said the suspects remained in the truck for a time and appeared to be watching people.

Cooper said he left the area to respond to another call, and when he returned the suspects were gone from the truck. He began to look for them when another officer radioed him saying there was a robbery under way at Dickason Avenue and Reagan Street. Cooper sent out an emergency page, and his officers converged on the suspects.

Cooper said the suspect who was holding the gun dropped it and began running, but one of the officers chased him and apprehended him near Café Brazil. Another security officer stopped the second suspect before he had a chance to run. 
"I'm very proud of them,” Cooper said of his officers.

Cooper said ordinarily, security officers don’t get involved in incidents that don’t occur on the property they’re assigned to patrol, but this was an exception.

“You just can’t let people walk away,” he said. “If you see somebody’s life in danger, you’ve got to take care of that.”

Cooper said one of the suspects remained uncooperative after police arrived and placed him in a patrol car.

“He was just beating his head against the windows and stuff,” Cooper said. “He just beat himself up in the car.”

Cooper said most of what the suspect was saying was inaudible. But he recalled the suspect using the word “queers” and admitting to the crime.

“One [suspect] said, ‘We knew what we were going to do when we left home,’” Cooper said. 

Robinson said Friday he believed police were intentionally trying to downplay the attack to avoid the negative publicity associated with a hate crime.


For updates on this story, check www.dallasvoice.com.