Lesbian couple stalked by man with baseball bat in New York City
A lesbian couple who were followed through the streets of New York City by a man with a baseball bat have opened up about the terrifying incident.
24-year-old trans woman Andi Died and her girlfriend, 23-year-old Danielle Rye were followed by a man to their home on June 18.
The man made numerous threatening transphobic and homophobic comments to the couple who were left terrified.
The incident started on a walk home after the pair went out to eat when a man walked past them and said: “Damn, that’s a man”.
Dier explained: “He was checking us out and he was mad he didn’t know exactly who he was checking out.
“He got embarrassed. He said something along the lines of, ‘How do you enjoying deceiving men?’”
The man began to follow the couple and his comments grew more aggressive as he told Dier that he “ought to shoot you for walking around like that”.
Rye threatened to call the police but the man said that his “bullet would reach them faster”.
The pair ran as fast as they could back to their apartment building and the man followed them the whole way.
They phoned the police and he stood outside of the building until the first police patrol car arrived.
“If we didn’t run away as fast as we could, he would’ve murdered us. He wouldn’t leave us alone,” Dier explained.
The police are now investigating the incident as a hate crime but Dier claimed that shortly after the incident when talking to the police they misgendered her.
“Until this guy is off the streets,” she said, “I just don’t feel safe in this place.”
In a post on Medium, Dier wrote that this was the daily occurrence that trans women have to face even in big cities like New York.
She wrote: “I’m not deceiving anyone. We simply exist, breathe and love like any normal human being. But between Hollywood and poorly filed police reports, it gives off that impression.
“When you’re on hormone replacement for years, your bones become more fragile than cis women. So when someone hits you as if you were a man, it’s a lethal blow. These institutions are complicit for the violence we’re facing.”
She added that the incident had deterred her from going to Pride and stressed that she was not as fortunate as the “mostly gay white men” and “cis-hetero onlookers” who would be at the event.
“I’ll be attempting to avoid a man on our block in the Bronx who threatened to shoot me and waited outside of my girlfriend’s building until NYPD pulled up.”
