Local
Gay man attacked, beaten by neighbors in Northeast D.C.
Police list incident as hate crime but courthouse ‘backlog’ could delay arrests
A woman, her daughter, and a man believed to be the daughter’s father repeatedly punched a gay man in the face while the mother called him a “Jewish faggot” and other anti-gay slurs during an Oct. 13 incident on the grounds of an apartment building where the victim and the two women live, according to the victim and a D.C. police incident report.
The victim, Antonio Zephir, 51, told the Washington Blade the incident began after the mother began shouting anti-gay slurs at him as he walked past her and his roommate outside the Northwood Gardens Apartments at 4870 Fort Totten Dr., N.E. at about 12:40 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 13.
Zephir identifies the mother as Aurlora Y. Ellis in court papers seeking a restraining order against her that he filed in D.C. Superior Court. He said she had acted in a hostile way toward him before the assault incident.
“For several months, every time Ms. Ellis sees me, she shouts homophobic slurs and I continued to ignore her,” Zephir told the Blade in an email.
He said that minutes before the Oct. 13 attack, Ellis yelled the words “Jewish faggot” when he walked past her as she was talking to his roommate, Steven Johnson. Zephir said it is well known among his neighbors at the apartment complex that he is of the Jewish faith.
“I responded with not-so-kind words. She ran towards me and assaulted me with hard punches toward my face,” Zephir wrote in his email to the Blade.
“I punched back in an attempt to defend myself,” he wrote. “Mr. Johnson tried to break us up when her daughter Latera Cox and [Cox’s] father assaulted me,” according to Zephir’s account of the incident. “Ms. Ellis yelled, ‘Call the police, you bitch faggot. They’re not going to do anything. This isn’t over yet.”
At that point, Ellis, her daughter Latera Cox, and the man Zephir believes to be Cox’s father fled the scene, Zephir told the Blade.
The D.C. police incident report, which lists the assault as a suspected hate crime, says, “All three suspects then fled east bound” on the 4800 block of Fort Totten Dr., N.E.
Zephir said he immediately called police, who arrived on the scene and took a report on the incident. The report obtained by the Blade lists the incident as a simple assault, which is a misdemeanor under D.C. law.
But Zephir said a detective working on the case told him this week that police were looking into speeding up the process of obtaining warrants for the arrest of the three attackers based, in part, on the injuries Zephir suffered from the attack. He provided the Blade with a medical report issued by the Washington Hospital Center, where his roommate took him to the emergency room the day following the attack, in response to severe pain he was experiencing to his face and head.
The report from the hospital, which treated and released him on Oct. 14, says he was diagnosed as having a fractured nose; a fracture of the “interior orbital wall,” which is the bone surrounding one of his eyes; subconjunctival hemorrhage or bleeding of his left eye; and “laceration of oral cavity” which means an injury inside his mouth caused by trauma from the assault.
Zephir told the Blade that the same detective told him last week that due to a “backlog” in cases at the D.C. Superior Court, it could take between one and two months for police and prosecutors to obtain warrants for the arrests of the two women and the man who assaulted him.
A police spokesperson told the Blade the case remains under active investigation. A spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, which acts as the prosecutor for adult criminal cases in D.C., said he would look into whether the office could publicly comment on the status of efforts to obtain arrest warrants for the three attackers.
Zephir said rumors had surfaced prior to the assault incident that Ellis may have access to a gun. Based on what he feared was a threat by Ellis when she told him during the attack that “this isn’t over yet,” he said he persuaded his roommate to drive him to the courthouse on the same day as the attack to apply for a court restraining order to prevent Ellis from harming him again.
Court records show he also filed a civil complaint against Ellis, Ellis’s daughter, and Ellis’s roommate, Linda Miller, who Zephir says in the complaint acted as an “enabler” for Ellis’ hostility toward him.
The complaint, which is a civil lawsuit that Zephir wrote by hand and filed by himself without hiring a lawyer, calls for $18,000 in damages.
“I have nightmares,” Zephir told the Blade. “I can’t believe it happened. I keep reliving the experience over and over and over in my head,” he said. “And I feel like I’m a prisoner in my own apartment. I don’t feel safe because I, honest to God, feel like she is going to bodily harm me and I might be, God forbid, murdered.”
Ellis, Cox, and Miller could not immediately be reached for comment.
Local
Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
Rayceen Pendarvis to moderate Dupont Underground panel on Sunday
LGBTQ groups in D.C. and elsewhere plan to use Black History Month as an opportunity to commemorate and celebrate Black lives and experiences.
Team Rayceen Productions has no specific events planned, but co-founder Rayceen Pendarvis will attend many functions around D.C. this month.
Pendarvis, a longtime voice in the LGBTQ community in D.C. will be moderating a panel at Dupont Underground on Sunday. The event, “Every (Body) Wants to Be a Showgirl,” will feature art from Black burlesque artists from around the country. Pendarvis on Feb. 23 will attend the showing of multimedia play at the Lincoln Theatre that commemorates the life of James Baldwin.
Equality Virginia plans to prioritize Black voices through a weekly online series, and community-based story telling. The online digital series will center Black LGBTQ voices, specifically trailblazers and activists, and contemporary Black queer and transgender people.
Narissa Rahaman, Equality Virginia’s executive director, stressed the importance of the Black queer community to the overall Pride movement, and said “Equality Virginia is proud to center those voices in our work this month and beyond.”
The Capital Pride Alliance, which hosts Pride events in D.C., has an alliance with the Center for Black Equity, which brings Black Pride to D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. The National LGBTQ Task Force has no specific Black History Month events planned, but plans to participate in online collaborations.
Cathy Renna, the Task Force’s director of communications, told the Washington Blade the organization remains committed to uplifting Black voices. “Our priority is keeping this at the forefront everyday,” she said.
The D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center is also hosting a series of Black History Month events.
The D.C. Public Library earlier this year launched “Freedom and Resistance,” an exhibition that celebrates Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. It will remain on display until the middle of March at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St., N.W.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
District of Columbia
Capital Pride wins anti-stalking order against local activist
Darren Pasha claims action is linked to his criticism of Pride organizers
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Feb. 6 partially approved an anti-stalking order against a local LGBTQ activist requested last October by the Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events.
The ruling by Judge Robert D. Okun requires former Capital Pride volunteer Darren Pasha to stay at least 100 feet away from Capital Pride’s staff, board members, and volunteers until the time of a follow up court hearing he scheduled for April 17.
In his ruling at the Feb. 6 hearing, which was virtual rather than held in-person at the courthouse, Okun said he had changed the distance that Capital Pride had requested for the stay-away, anti-stalking order from 200 yards to 100 feet. The court records show that the judge also denied a motion filed earlier by Pasha, who did not attend the hearing, to “quash” the Capital Pride civil case against him.
Pasha told the Washington Blade he suffered an injury and damaged his mobile phone by falling off his scooter on the city’s snow-covered streets that prevented him from calling in to join the Feb. 6 court hearing.
In his own court filings without retaining an attorney, Pasha has strongly denied the stalking related allegations against him by Capital Pride, saying “no credible or admissible evidence has been provided” to show he engaged in any wrongdoing.
The Capital Pride complaint initially filed in court on Oct. 27, 2025, includes an 18-page legal brief outlining its allegations against Pasha and an additional 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by witnesses whose names are blacked out.
“Over the past year, Defendant Darren Pasha (“DSP”) has engaged in a sustained, and escalating course of conduct directed at CPA, including repeated and unwanted contact, harassment, intimidation, threats, manipulation, and coercive behavior targeting CPA staff, board members, volunteers, and affiliates,” the Capital Pride complaint states.
In his initial 16-page response to the complaint, Pasha says the Capital Pride complaint appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with the organization and its then president, Ashley Smith, last year.
“It is evident that the document is replete with false, misleading, and unsubstantiated assertions,” he said of the complaint.
Smith, who has since resigned from his role as board president, did not respond to a request by the Blade for comment at the time the Capital Pride court complaint was filed against Pasha.
Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos and the attorney representing the group in its legal action against Pasha, Nick Harrison, did not immediately respond to a Blade request for comment on the judge’s Feb. 6 ruling.
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