Local College Student Victim of Alleged Hate Crime

According to a report in the University of Delaware student newspaper The Review, a university student from Setauket was assaulted on campus last weekend in what Newark, Del. police are investigating as a potential hate crime.

Zachary Baum, 19, who is gay, told The Review that minutes after he arrived at an off-campus party, a group of students poured beer on him. Another student then threw him to the ground and began choking him before his friends with him at the party could stop the assault. Baum and his friends were able to find two police officers patrolling the area on foot.

"Reports are somebody made derogatory comments to a subject regarding his sexuality and that individual was thrown to the ground," Newark police Lt. Mark Farrall told The Review.

Colleen Dougherty, president of the university's LGBT student advocacy group Haven, called the assault "shocking."

"We still kind of have a sense of distance, a sense of, 'This can't happen to me, this can't happen to my friends,'" Dougherty told The Review. "And then here it is. It's happening to someone that you care about. It was very shocking."

Click here to read the full report from The Review.