Sleeping gay couple severely burned after man pours boiling water on them
When a man tossed boiling hot water on Marquez Tolbert and his boyfriend as they slept, Tolbert started screaming and just couldn't stop.
"The pain doesn't let you sleep. It's like excruciating, 24 hours a day and it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't dial down or anything. It's just there," Tolbert said, as tears steamed down his face during an interview posted Thursday on Atlanta's WSB-TV. "You wake up in the middle of the night, you just cry because you want to sleep and you can't."
Tolbert, 21, and his 23-year-old boyfriend, Anthony Gooden, suffered second and third-degree burns because of the February attack, which occurred two days before Valentine's Day. Their assailant targeted them because they were gay.
You May Also Like
Tolbert suffered burns on his neck, arms and face and spent 10 days at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Gooden was severely burned across his entire face and 60% of his body, including his neck, back, arms and chest, according to a GoFundMe page posted by his cousin to raise money for hospital bills. Gooden spent about a month in the hospital and was released Friday, Tolbert told Project Q Atlanta, an LGBTQ blog.
The couple was sleeping in an apartment in the Atlanta suburb of College Park that Gooden shares with his mother when his mother's boyfriend, Martin Blackwell, allegedly tossed the boiling water on them. Tolbert shot up, hit a wall near the bed and started flailing around, screaming uncontrollably.
"Martin pulled me up and said, 'Get out of my house with all that gay,'" Tolbert told WSB-TV. "I couldn't stop screaming.”
Blackwell, 48, then forced the couple out of the apartment. They went door-to-door looking for help, but initially, neighbors wouldn't open their doors, a family friend of Tolbert wrote on GoFundMe. Blackwell was disgusted by the couple's relationship, according to a police report obtained by WSB-TV.
"They'll be all right. It was just a little hot water on them," Blackwell reportedly told police at the time.
But the men's burns were so bad, doctors had to graft skin from their legs to heal them. Tolbert said he can't even go outside because his skin is so sensitive, it feels like the sun's warmth is burning his body all over again.
"It's so hard for me to look at my cousin in such an emotional state being that before this tragedy he was so independent, happy, outgoing and charismatic," Diyawn said of Gooden. "Now, as I sit and watch him cry and have mental breakdowns asking if there is anything he could have done differently just tears my heart apart."
College Park Police arrested Blackwell, who has been charged with two counts of aggravated battery and remains behind bars, according to Fulton County jail records.
Georgia does not prosecute hate crimes, but they may be sought on the federal level during an upcoming court hearing, officials told WSB-TV.
Gooden's GoFundMe page has raised just $1,200 of the requested $30,000. Tolbert's fundraising page, which has the same goal, has fared far better so far, netting more than $21,000.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Topics LGBTQ
Brittany Levine Beckman was Mashable's managing editor. She enjoys crafting feature ideas, learning new things, and party parrots. Before working at Mashable, she covered community news at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. That's how she met a zonkey and the tallest man in the world.
