Officers Henry Huot and Joseph Zinna were two of the NYPD officers who helped to arrest Morales. (Christopher Sadowski)
Elliot Morales being taken from the Sixth Precinct Saturday. (Christopher Sadowski)
‘OUT’ RAGE: Elliot Morales is arrested early yesterday in the “hate crime” shooting of a gay man on West Eighth Street in the West Village. (Christopher Sadowski)
MARK CARSON Shot dead by stranger.
‘OUT’ RAGE: Elliot Morales is arrested early yesterday in the “hate crime” shooting of a gay man on West Eighth Street in the West Village. (Christopher Sadowski)
A gay man was gunned down in Greenwich Village early yesterday allegedly by a bigot who hurled homophobic slurs at him — a senseless attack that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly called “clearly a hate crime.”
Brooklyn resident Mark Carson and a pal were walking on Sixth Avenue near West Eighth Street at around midnight when the two were approached by Elliot Morales, 33, and two other Hispanic men, police said.
“Look at these faggots,” one of the men snarled, remarking on the boots, cut-off shorts and tank tops that Carson, 32, and his friend were wearing. “What are you, gay wrestlers?”
Carson and his friend turned right onto West Eighth Street. One of the Hispanic men left. Morales and the other man kept shadowing them.
“Do you want to die here?” Morales asked Carson, a manager at a West Village frozen-yogurt shop.
“Is he your boy?” he asked Carson, pointing at his best friend of 15 years.
When Carson answered “Yes,” Morales pulled out a silver Taurus .38-caliber revolver and blasted him once in the cheek, authorities said.
Carson died shortly after at Beth Israel Hospital.
“I thought that kind of hate stuff was gone, but I see that it’s not,” the victim’s distraught father, Mark Carson Sr., told The Post.
“It’s simply ridiculous. People are what people are. They do what they do. You can’t knock down who people are.”
After the shooting, Morales ran east and then downtown.
NYPD Officer Henry Huot gave chase, and busted Morales on MacDougal and West Third streets.
It took time to identify Morales because he was carrying a Pennsylvania man’s ID and was “very uncooperative with detectives,” said cops and a law-enforcement source.
The ex-con, who served 11 years in prison on a robbery conviction, seemed so crazed, cops were investigating whether he was on drugs, a police source said.
The murder is at least the 22nd anti-gay attack in the city so far this year, police said. Anti-gay attacks are up an alarming 77 percent from 13 such assaults during the same period last year.
A spate of anti-gay attacks have plagued the West Village and nearby neighborhoods in recent weeks. As many as five anti-gay attacks have been reported in the city this month.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who represents the West Village and wants to be the city’s first openly gay mayor, condemned the attacks.
“There was a time in New York City when two people of the same gender could not walk down the street arm-in-arm without fear of violence and harassment,” she said.
“We refuse to go back to that time.”
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram, Larry Celona and Aaron Feis