What to Know
- When one of the victims began recording two men saying sexual orientation insensitive remarks toward them, the men tried to take the phone.
- The men kicked and punched the victims, police said, and pushed one into a store window, causing a crack.
- The men took the phone and ran, but a description was broadcast and they were caught, police said.
Two men attacked two transgender women outside a 7-Eleven in Maryland early Monday morning, Montgomery County Police said.
About 2:40 a.m. the Hispanic victims, ages 36 and 44, were about to enter the store on Amherst Avenue in Wheaton when the men allegedly directed hateful, sexual-orientation-based slurs at them in Spanish, police said.
When the 36-year-old victim began to record the incident on her cellphone, one of the men threw a cup of noodles he was holding on the victims, then the men tried to grab the cellphone and punched and kicked the victims, police said.
The victim who’d recorded the incident was pushed into the store’s glass window hard enough to cause a large crack, police said.
The men took the cellphone and ran, but officers located men matching the description of the suspects, police said. They were identified as the suspects, taken into custody and charged.
The victims were treated for minor injuries at a police station, police said.
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Carlos Hernandez-Sanez, 18, was charged with robbery, second-degree assault, malicious destruction of property valued over $1,000, and harassment of a person based on race, religion or sexual orientation, a hate crime carrying a maximum penalty of three years and/or $5,000. He is being held on $65,000 bond.
Edras Vasquez, 20, was charged with robbery, two counts of second-degree assault, malicious destruction of property valued over $1,000, and two counts of harassment of a person based on race, religion or sexual orientation. He is being held on $125,000 bond.
