Southlake teen arrested for hate crime at Georgetown

According to CNN, Southlake resident and Georgetown student Phillip Cooney, 19, was arrested Thursday for beating up a gay Georgetown student. Police have been looking for the person who attacked the man since Sept. 9 and are calling the attack a hate crime because the suspect yelled anti-gay slurs during the attack, according to reports.

The injured student did a lot of the investigating on his own.

A friend of the injured student told him he overheard someone talking about the attack in a class, and wrote down the initials embroidered on that student's backpack.

The injured man went to the social networking site Facebook, and looked up all the people that matched the initials until he came acoross and recognized Cooney, who he now says attacked him.

--Melissa Vargas

Comments

[Liza Null]

I hope the Star-Telegram will tell us more about Mr. Cooney's background and his family. They are very visible and "active" here in the Southlake community and I hope that some light can be shed on anti-social and hate-filled behavior.

[T. Smith]

I think we need to remember that people in America are still innocent until actually proven guilty.The recent situation at Duke University is similiar to this situation in that personal accusations are the basis of the arrests in both cases. The subsequent complete exoneration of the students at Duke should give the media consuming public at least a moment's hesitation in rushing to judgement of yet another young person until the justice system has had a chance to sort things out.

[GUex]

Liza Null - wow, his dad is a fallen former Bush aid and former lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute? (Google brought back a link to wikipedia about his dad's former jobs.) I see what you meant about his family being 'visible'!!

But what are you implying with "anti-social and hate-filled behavior"? His family wouldn't even be mentioned if the dad hadn't been in an important government job - is this fair to the parents?

Yes, innocent until proven guilty as the students at Duke University accusations.

Odd way the victim "found" his attacker with Facebook. Strange the victim's name not published.

Smith - How can we be "media consuming public"? Google the accused's name. Seems VERY quiet in the media about this alleged hate crime.