Sean Lai, 30, an out gay man of Chinese ancestry, was beaten earlier this month. (Photo provided to the Washington Blade)
A gay Chinese man and his parents were attacked and beaten about 10:30 p.m. Aug. 7 near Washington, D.C.’s National Observatory by a male suspect who called them “faggots” and shouted, “You are not Americans!,” according to charging documents filed in D.C. Superior Court.
The charging documents show that D.C. police, who arrived on the scene as the incident was unfolding, arrested Patrick Joseph Miller Trebat, 38, on one count of felony assault, two counts of simple assault and one count of destruction of property. A police incident report lists the assault as a suspected hate crime.
A statement released by the Watch Commander of the D.C. Police Second District, whose officers made the arrest, said the family of three were transported to a local hospital for treatment of injuries listed as non-life threatening.
The Watch Commander, who is not identified by name, added in the statement that suspect Trebat punched and kicked the three victims as he stated, “Get out of my country.”
Among the victims was Sean Lai, 30, an out gay man of Chinese ancestry who last year completed his doctorate degree in physics at Georgetown University and currently works as a data scientist. He has been a D.C. resident since 2013.
Court documents state that Trebat allegedly attacked Lai and his parents as they were walking on the street in the city’s Observatory Circle neighborhood where they are currently living and which is a short distance from the National Cathedral.
The court documents show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. filed documents in D.C. Superior Court, charging Trebat with two counts of bias-related assault with significant bodily injury and one count of bias-related assault in connection with the incident along with a charge of destruction of property related to damage to Lai’s cell phone during the attack.
But the charges filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office attribute the bias aspect of the crime only to the three victims’ “actual or perceived national origin.” The charges filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office do not attribute the attack to bias related to Lai’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, even though one of the charging documents quotes Trebat as reciting the word “faggots.”
William Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said the office does not comment on its reasons for charging decisions in pending cases. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office is continuing to investigate the facts and circumstances of the case and has no further comment at this time,” Miller told the Washington Blade.
The court documents show that Trebat is a D.C. resident who lives less than a mile from where the incident occurred. The documents show he was released by a judge two days after his arrest on the condition that he be placed in the court’s High Intensity Supervision release program.
Court records show D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Pipe also issued a pretrial stay away order. The details of the order were not immediately made public, but most such orders require an arrested person to stay away from anyone he or she is charged with harming.
The court records also show that court status hearings set for the Trebat case initially scheduled for Aug. 30 and Oct. 20 were cancelled and his next scheduled appearance in court for a felony status conference is set for Nov. 15.
Details of the incident are provided in the police incident report and a two-page arrest affidavit prepared by police and prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Although Lai’s sexual orientation is not disclosed in the police report or the arrest affidavit, a close friend who contacted the Washington Blade said Lai wishes to be identified as an out gay man. The friend said Lai plans to release a public statement about the incident after more details about the case become known.
According to the two documents, Lai, who is listed as Victim 3, told police he and his parents were walking home along the 3700 block of Fulton Street, N.W. when Suspect 1, later identified as Trebat, started following them.
“Victim 3 states that he and his family tried to cross the street to create distance between them and Suspect 1,” the police report says. “Victim 3 states that he heard Defendant 1 call him and his family ‘faggots’ and that he heard D-1 exclaim, ‘You are not Americans!’ before D-1 began to assault his family,” the arrest affidavit states.
The affidavit identifies Victim 1 as the mother, age 51, and Victim 2 as the father, age 64.
“Victim 1 and Victim 2 did not speak English,” the affidavit says, adding that police arriving on the scene immediately placed a radio call for a police officer who is a Mandarin speaker who quickly arrived on the scene to provide translation services to help police interview the parents.
“V-1 stated that D-1 assaulted her husband V-2, causing him to fall to the ground,” the affidavit continues. “V-1 states that D-1 then pushed her to the ground, causing the listed injury. V-2 stated that D-1 came from behind and struck him with a closed fist in the back of the head, causing him to fall to the ground,” says the affidavit.
“V-3,” Sean Lai, “states he turned around and observed D-1 assault his parents,” says the affidavit. “V-3 intervened and pushed D-1 away from his parents, ensuing in a physical struggle between V-3 and D-1,” the affidavit says.
The affidavit says the father then tried to intervene to protect his son from Trebat’s assault, but Trebat “kept pushing them both to the ground.” It says that at some point during the assault, each of the three victims sustained injuries serious enough to send them to a hospital.
It says that during his struggle with Trebat, Lai’s phone fell out of his pocket and was damaged when it struck the ground. The affidavit says the damaged phone prompted prosecutors to charge Trebat with the single count of destruction of property.
The attack against Lai and his parents took place five months after the release of a report in March by the group Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate that found at least 140 hate-related incidents had been reported against people of Asian ancestry across D.C., Maryland and Virginia since March of 2020.
Civil rights organizations have attributed the anti-Asian attacks to the bogus and racist belief by some that Asians should be blamed for the coronavirus pandemic because it originated in China.
