dallas-bbq

Village Voice Runs Story About Hate Crimes Pegged To Dallas BBQ Chair Attacker, Who Was Not Charged With a Hate Crime

Rich Juzwiak · 06/24/16 11:45AM

Last year, a man named Bayna El-Amin smashed a chair over the head of another man named Jonathan Snipes at a Chelsea Dallas BBQ. Snipes, who is gay, initially portrayed the attack to DNAInfo as bias-related and unprovoked. Because El-Amin fled the scene and wasn’t arrested until over a month later, the public didn’t get to hear his side of the story. That, along with our cultural imperative to believe a victim when he speaks out, meant that Snipes’ narrative prevailed. (Snipes’s boyfriend, Ethan York-Adams, was also involved in the altercation.) It seemed an obvious example of “anti-LGBT hate violence,” in the words of City Councilman Corey Johnson, until an important detail emerged: El-Amin himself is queer.

Suspected Dallas BBQ Attacker Is Gay: Is His Crime a Hate Crime?

Rich Juzwiak · 05/26/15 11:15AM

The rumors appear to be true: Bayna El-Amin, the man wanted by police after hitting another man over the head with a chair in a fight at the Chelsea Dallas BBQ earlier this month, seems to have been romantically involved with another man. Gawker has discovered what looks to be El-Amin’s Facebook page, which is listed under an alias variation of his apparent birth name and contains several pictures of a man with identical-looking features and facial hair as the man in the Dallas BBQ videos, as well as El-Amin’s various mugshots. There is reference to the page’s owner working the door at a nightclub; Animal uncovered that a now-deleted Facebook page in El-Amin’s full name listed him as “Personal Security for Sketchie ENTertainment,” a nightclub promotion company.