SUSPECTS: Asllan Berisha (left) and Brian Ramirez (right) are held yesterday after their arrest in the beatdown near the Garden. (
)
Two gay men were beaten early yesterday near Herald Square by a gang of thugs who shouted homophobic slurs as they pummeled the victims to the ground, police said.
The attack left the victims — Manhattan residents ages 27 and 37 — battered and bloody, with one needing emergency eye surgery at Bellevue Hospital.
Cops collared two suspects in the assault, but another three or four got away and were being sought yesterday.
The beatdown took place five days after a gay couple was brutally attacked after Sunday’s Knicks-Pacers playoff game at Madison Square Garden, although sources say they don’t believe the assaults are related.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the city’s highest elected gay official, said she was outraged at the anti-gay attacks.
“These vicious assaults are not reflective of the diversity that defines New York City,” Quinn, a Democratic mayoral candidate, said in a statement.
She urged New Yorkers to “stay alert, safe and vigilant.”
Asllan Berisha, of West 96th Street, and Brian Ramirez, of Third Avenue, both 21, were arraigned last night on charges of assault and harassment in Manhattan Criminal Court for the latest attack.
Berisha’s cousin said, “He doesn’t have a problem with gay people,” while his lawyer said, “My client was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Ramirez had a black eye in court that his defense attorney claims occurred when he was punched by one of the gay men.
Berisha and Ramirez were allegedly among a pack of up to six assailants who confronted the victims shortly before 5 a.m. as the pair were walking near the Space Billiards pool hall at 34 W. 32nd St.
As the victims, whose names were not released, were walking away from the parlor after being were denied entry, one thug asked whether they were gay, according to a police official.
“When they acknowledged they were, they were beaten to the ground,” said the official, adding the attackers uttered anti-gay slurs and repeatedly punched and kicked them.
The attack spilled over to the entrance of the PATH station at West 33rd Street, where Port Authority Police Sgt. Michael Thomas was driving by in a patrol car and requested backup.
Thomas, along with PAPD Officers Matt Vogelman and Dwight Clark chased down Berisha and Ramirez, but the alleged cohorts escaped on foot.
“They came after us and fought us because we are homosexuals,” one of the victims told police.
Additional reporting by Kathryn Cusma