Police: Gang committed anti-gay attacks

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NEW YORK, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- Nine young men driven by hatred for gays carried out vicious attacks on four men in New York City, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Saturday.

At a news conference, Kelly announced eight suspects had been arrested, CNN reported. He said a ninth was expected to turn himself in. All the suspects are Bronx borough residents.

Three of the victims were imprisoned in an empty apartment and beaten, Kelly said. Two were 17-year-olds who were questioned separately about their sexual relationship with a 30-year-old man. He was brought to the apartment, and one of the teens was forced to burn him with cigarettes.

The group allegedly went to an apartment one of the teens shared with an older brother who they forced to give them money, the New York Daily News reported.

"These suspects employed terrible, wolf-pack odds of nine against one, odds which revealed them as predators whose crimes were as cowardly as they were despicable," Kelly said.

The victims were allegedly beaten, cut and in one case sodomized with the handle of a toilet plunger.

"When you hear the details of what occurred, torture really is the only word that comes to mind," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who appeared with Kelly at the news conference, said.