A judge this week upheld all charges against three people accused of physically and verbally attacking a gay couple in Center City this fall.
After hearing nearly three hours of testimony, including from one of the victims, Judge Charles Hayden ordered a trial Tuesday morning for Kathryn Knott and Philip Williams, 24, and Kevin Harrigan, 26. The trio faces aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and criminal-conspiracy charges. Defense attorneys for all three requested the aggravated assault and conspiracy charges be dropped, but Hayden said he was “satisfied” with the case present by Assistant District Attorney Michael Barry and that all charges were held over for trial.
Hayden scheduled the next court proceeding for 11 a.m. Jan. 6 in Room 1104 of the Criminal Justice Center, 1301 Filbert St. All three defendants have been free on bail since shortly after their Sept. 24 arrests.
They are accused of assaulting Zachary Hesse and Andrew Haught Sept. 11 at 16th and Chancellor streets, in an incident that drew international headlines and is credited with the creation of the city’s new LGBT-inclusive hate-crimes law. However, none of the three can be charged under the law, since it was enacted after the incident.
Hesse, 28, testified for about an hour Tuesday. He said he and Haught, who have been a couple for more than six years, had just gotten frozen yogurt around 10:30 p.m. the night in question and were heading to get a piece of pizza. They were walking east on Chancellor Street, about a foot apart from one another and came upon a group of about a dozen people heading north on 16th Street. Hesse said he and Haught were about four feet away from the group when Harrigan, unprovoked, looked at him and said, “Is that your fucking boyfriend?” Hesse said he replied, “Yes, he’s my fucking boyfriend. Do you have a problem with that?”
Hesse identified Harrigan in the courtroom. He said he believed Harrigan may have been wearing a red button-up shirt that night but wouldn’t forget his face.
“He said it looking right at me. He said it like it was a joke, to poke fun,” Hesse said. Hesse said Harrigan continued, “So you’re a dirty, fucking faggot?” to which Hesse said, “Maybe I am a dirty fucking faggot,” as they both continued walking toward one another. At that, he said Harrigan pushed him, hands to his chest, and Hesse returned the push to the chest, prompting Harrigan to punch him on his left cheek.
“Then things just got kind of messy,” Hesse testified. “There was screaming, cursing. There were six or eight people surrounding me. I was trying to swing back, but I don’t know if it connected with anyone. I was terrified.”
Hesse that, after the initial punch from Harrigan, someone from the group began pinning his arms to his side, as he attempted to break free, off and on for about a minute.
Geoff Nagle, who witnessed the incident from his third-floor apartment overlooking Chancellor Street, testified that he saw Hesse being held in a headlock by an individual in a blue button-down shirt, although he couldn’t identify the individual. Hesse, however, said he did not recall being held in a headlock.
Hesse said a woman with blonde hair and a white dress approached and, from about a foot away, began “pawing” and “swatting” at his face. He identified the woman as Knott in the courtroom.
“She hit me in the face and just kept calling me a ‘dirty, fucking faggot,’ ‘faggot, faggot,'” Hesse said.
He said he pushed Knott’s hand backward from his face. On cross-examination, Knott’s attorney, Louis Busico, pressed Hesse about the movement of his arms, and Fortunato Perri, Jr., Williams’ attorney, suggested Knott was the victim.
“You didn’t see [Haught] strike a female? You’re the only one who did that, right?” Perri questioned Hesse, to audible reactions from the packed courtroom. Perri later said his client was “coming to the aid after a female was assaulted.” Busico also asserted that Hesse’s stature — 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds — should have caused him to not react to Knott.
Nagle’s vision of Hesse’s interaction with Knott was somewhat obstructed, but he testified that a woman, whose hair color and clothing he couldn’t see, “wagged her finger” in Hesse’s face. He said he then saw a hand push the woman’s hand away and there did not appear to be physical connection with the woman’s face or any other part of her body, and she was not knocked over.
After he pushed Knott’s hand away, Hesse testified, Williams, who he also identified in court, ran from behind Knott and punched him in the face, then punched Haught, who was positioned slightly behind him, at least five times, knocking him to the ground. He said Haught’s “arms were flying” in defense, but he wouldn’t characterize it as punching back.
Nagle testified that, after the woman’s hand was pushed, he saw the group moving several feet to the left, heard three or four punches and saw the man who had been in a headlock “thrown drastically back,” and then saw another man laying on the ground, at which point he called police and hurried outside.
Hesse said the entire incident lasted fewer than three minutes. He said he heard the word “faggot” at least 10 times, from both males and females in the group. Nagle said he heard the phrase “fucking faggot” multiple times from inside his apartment.
The group dispersed north on 16th Street, leaving Haught on the ground.
“He was laying in a pool of blood,” Hesse testified. “He had a laceration, about four inches, from his nose to his mouth. It was open, just gushing blood and around his eyes was swelling and getting black.”
He said Haught was coming in and out of consciousness and was asking for his glasses, dropped in the attack, and his bag, which was picked up in the melee and later found in the possession of a homeless individual. The couple was transported to Hahnemann Hospital. Hesse had lacerations on his face and black eyes and Haught had broken cheekbones and had to have his jaw wired shut for almost eight weeks. Both missed a number of weeks of work, Hesse said.
After Nagle and Hesse testified, the three defense attorneys, who also included Josh Scarpello for Harrigan, all separately argued that they viewed the incident as two distinct encounters — Harrigan’s initial confrontation with the couple and the confrontation with Knott that prompted the encounter with Williams — and thus, the conspiracy charges were unwarranted.
“We don’t have a conspiracy, we don’t have a wolfpack or a group of kids seeking out people to beat up in Center City,” Perri said, urging the judge to look beyond the “hysterics” surrounding the case — presumably the intense media scrutiny and public response.
However, Barry contended that the language used during the attack suggested the conspiracy charges were appropriate.
“This was one continual event,” Barry argued. “[Harrigan] was not curiously inquiring [Hesse and Haught’s sexual orientation]. He was intimidating, he was mocking them, who they are, how they were born. They were repeatedly called faggots, by men, by women. These two men were then surrounded, physically menaced and terrified.”
Barry noted that criminal-conspiracy charges are nearly always supported solely by circumstantial evidence.
“It can be inferred through group conduct. Smart criminals invoke and use others,” Barry said. “One gentleman had to have a mouth on him: Harrigan started this. Knott reached in and called them faggots and Williams finished it. And finished it violently.”
None of the three defendants reacted throughout the testimony or upon Hayden’s ruling. Prior to the hearing, they each sat between their respective parents and were surrounded by nearly 30 family and friends, who took up nearly four rows in the courtroom.
The D.A.’s LGBT liaison, Nellie Fitzpatrick, state Rep. Brian Sims and Caryn Kunkle, who has served as the spokesperson for the couple, were also present.