Police have arrested eleven teenagers over two gay men were allegedly lured via a gay dating app and then bashed.
Police from Mount Prospect near Chicago said the teens, all aged 16 and 17, took their inspiration from a viral social media trend.
The two separate assaults occurred on July 8th 2024, when the men arrived to meet a person that they’d connected with on a gay dating app.
Around 9:45pm a 41-year-old man reported that he’d been beaten by a group of teenagers in a parking lot of the Chicago suburb.
“The victim related that he had utilized an online dating app to arrange to meet a person at that location,” police said. “After arriving, the victim related that he was approached by a group of teenage males, who confronted him verbally and battered him. Teenagers in the group also damaged the victim’s vehicle.”
Around 10 minutes later police responded to a second allegation of an assault. A 23-year-old man had gone to meet a man he had met on an unnamed social media app, when he arrived, he was confronted by a group of teenagers who allegedly beat him. The second incident occurred one mile away from the first case.
Police were able to track some of the alleged offenders via CCTV and later apprehended a total of eleven offenders.
The group of eleven were charged with one or two counts each of aggravated battery, criminal damage to property and mob action. One boy used “a racial and another derogatory term” during one of the incidents, according to cops, resulting in two hate crime charges for that teen.
Police say the incidents are an example of “post and boast” crimes, where the offenders film their crimes and then post them to social media apps like TikTok and Snapchat.
In recent years similar crimes have occurred in Perth. Last year four teenagers were charged over multiple alleged assaults and police were searching for additional victims based on footage they recovered from the accused boys’ phones. There were also similar crimes using dating apps to lure victims in other states of Australia as well.
