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An elderly Texas woman has been charged with an anti-gay hate crime after allegedly attacking her 25-year-old neighbor with her wooden cane.
As The Fort-Worth Star-Telegram is reporting, 71-year-old Wanda Derby allegedly attacked the man, who has since been identified as Lloyd Guerrero by other media outlets, one week after Derby's son moved in with him. Derby is accused not only of striking Guerrero several times with the cane, but also choking him by placing the cane against his throat. She is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and the charge is enhanced as a hate crime, and is also charged with assault causing bodily injury, according to the Associated Press.
Guerrero, a local actor who lives next door and is openly gay, says the attack followed several weeks of escalating tension after Derby previously outed him on her Facebook page. "I honestly don't know what she was thinking or what she even had in her," he told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. "Honestly, it looked like something out of a TV show. And I will say, she hit pretty hard."
Guerrero's mother, who witnessed the attack, was also reportedly hit in the face.
The Dallas Voice notes that Derby called Guerrero a "faggot" several times when talking to police, and claimed that he had AIDS and would give it to her son. Guerrero had marks and bruises on his throat and body and was treated at the scene.
The relationship between Guerrero and Derby's son, who is reportedly in his 30s, remains unclear, but Derby's Facebook page contains some colorful comments. "My son Steven is no longer my son," she writes in one post. "He has sided with the idiots next door to me and I guess he things they will take care of him. He will never get another thing from me or his dad. We have washed our hands of him."
Derby posted $11,500 bond and has since been released from jail, according to the Star-Telegram.