Hate crime victim: 'This just has to stop'

Richard Tso was was traveling in Maryland last August when a man charged at him while yelling anti-gay slurs.


"He lunged at me and continued to call me faggot repeatedly," he told KOMO4. "He had punched me probably six or seven times, and I was on the floor."

"I yelled, 'Help! Please, someone help me!" And amid the confusion, he even blamed himself. "I am gay. For me, I felt like maybe I deserved it, for a second," he said. But Tso now knows he did not deserve the brutal beating that left him with two black eyes and in need of an ambulance.

The ringing in his ears and emotional collapse followed him home to Seattle.

Hours before the attack, Tso met Ajit Kapur at a marketing conference. The two exchanged business cards.

Tso says he later heard Kapur utter anti-gay slurs at the bar, but ignored it. But then Kapur followed him up to the 14th floor of his hotel, and blocked him in the hall near the elevator.

"(I said,) 'I don't know you. You don't know who I am. Why are you doing this?'" said Tso. "I looked directly into his eyes, and I couldn't see a human there. He seemed very animalistic. He didn't really care."

Last week, Kapur pleaded guilty to a second-degree assault, hate crime. Maryland state law, like Washington's, protects victims targeted because of their sexual orientation.

"It's just important right now as a collective that this just has to stop," said Tso, who has since founded a nonprofit group called TAP America. "TAP" stands for tolerance, Americanism and patriotism.

So calls it a movement he hopes will gain momentum and give victims a voice. "People need to know that it happens, and they're not alone if they are in in this situation," he said.

Kapur was given a three-year suspended sentence and probation, so he may not serve any jail time for the crime. As part of the plea deal, he did give $500 to Tso's nonprofit group.