The New York City neighborhood of Greenwich Village is the birthplace of the Beat movement, home to NYU students scurrying across Washington Square Park to get to class, replete with popular bars, restaurants and shopping. It is also considered a safe area where most feel welcome, a friendly haven in a city that often grows cold.
It was a place that had only one homicide reported in 2012.
On Friday night, the Village experienced its first known murder this year, when resident Mark Carson was shot and killed by 33-year-old Elliot Morales, who trailed Carson and his male friend yelling anti-gay slurs.
"You want to die tonight?" He hissed at Carson and his companion before shooting 32-year-old Carson in the face.
Police say the shooting was undoubtedly a hate crime.
The New York Times reported that Morales was intoxicated the night of the murder, urinating in front of the Annisa bar and restaurant on Barrow Street and West Fourth. He then entered the bar, throwing homophobic insults at the bartender. He pulled up his sweatshirt to reveal a firearm in a shoulder holster, saying he would shoot the bartender if he called the authorities.
Morales then left the bar, encountering Carson and the friend he was with at West Eighth Street. Once more, Morales fired off a series of antigay slurs.
"What are you, a gay wrestler? Is that your boy?" He taunted.
"Yes," Carson replied.
Morales shot him once in the face with a Zastava handgun and killed him.
"It is clear that the victim here was killed only because and just because he was thought to be gay," said police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. "There is no question about that."
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn swore that New York would not revert back to being a city where LGBT couples felt fearful of walking down the street.
Police pressed murder and weapons charges against Morales on Sunday when he attended his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. The judge held him with no bail. His next court date is set for Thursday.
He remained silent at his hearing, but his sister, Edith Gutierrez, said to the Times that she did not think he was capable of such a hateful crime.
"We have relatives who are gay," she said. When he called her from jail on Sunday, she claimed that "he said he doesn't remember anything-he was under the influence, he was drinking."
Morales has served upwards of 10 years for a robbery conviction, according to state correction records.
Some LGBT groups in the area have announced they will march Monday at the scene of the shooting.
The deceased was a manager at the Ciao Bella gelato kiosk in Grand Central Terminal. According to Isabella Odonkor, he was personable, a hard worker and proudly homosexual.
"He was not afraid of it, not afraid to share it," she said.
When he encountered a few antigay comments from customers, "he'd always just laugh it off," she said. "He was proud of who he was."
