Hillsborough County Sheriff
A Florida man who fatally shot a gay man in a dog park—allegedly after months of homophobic harassment—has been charged with murder as a hate crime. Gerald Radford claimed that he killed John Lay, 52, in self-defense, and authorities initially did not charge him with a crime. “I was attacked. I defended myself. End of story,” Radford texted a Tampa Bay Times reporter days after the shooting. Florida’s Stand Your Ground law made it difficult to prosecute Radford with no witnesses to say who attacked whom. But friends of Lay came forward with accounts of how he had been tormented with slurs and threats by Radford for months. “You’re going to die,” Radford allegedly screamed at him the day before the shooting. “Following a thorough investigation, the evidence shows Radford was the aggressor and was motivated by the fact that the victim was a gay man,” Hillsborough County State Attorney Suzy Lopez said on Friday, according to the Times.