EDGE on the Net

A Buffalo, New York woman was stabbed in the eye and gashed on the face and arm in a bias crime perpetrated by a young woman wearing a tiara.

Lindsay C. Harmon, her girlfriend Nichole Bauer, and Dinah Coniglio, a friend of theirs, had just stepped out of a lesbian bar called Roxy’s at around 2:00 a.m. on Jan. 1 when a group of passers-by began to hurl anti-gay abuse at them. The group consisted of two women and four men, but in the wake of the attack, the women and two of the men fled, while the remaining two men, who said they were not associates of the others, remained at the scene.

The three women were getting into their car when the incident began. Bauer got back out of the car to confront them, reported a Jan. 6 article in local newspaper The Buffalo News. Bauer was punched and fell; Harmon attempted to break up the escalating conflict, and ended up being stabbed in the right eye. "I tried breaking up the argument," Harmon recounted. "I said, ’Let’s go home. Let’s get out of here.’ I was walking away, and she [the attacker] came behind me, and I got nailed. I thought I’d been punched, and I fell. I just sat there waiting for her to kick me or something."

Coniglio had not seen Harmon being stabbed; she punched the knife-wielding assailant, while Bauer also started into the fray. Bauer was held back by one of the two men who later gave statements to the authorities. The man warned Bauer that the young woman had a knife in her possession. Coniglio went to help Harmon. "Lindsay just kept saying, "Dina, I can’t see out of my eye,’" Coniglio told the media.

Harmon underwent three hours of surgery for her knife wounds. She has stitches on her right cheek and eyelid and on her left arm, the article said; at the moment, she has no vision in her injured right eye. "It could be a long time before anything is solid, positive or negative, with my sight," she told the press.

"I hope the police catch the woman who stabbed me," added Harmon. "I want to sit in front of her and ask her how and why you do this. I don’t understand it. I really don’t know why anyone at all would attack someone. I wonder how somebody brings themselves to attack another person."

The article noted that only hours earlier, two Buffalo women pepper-sprayed, beat, and robbed a man at an area mall, yelling anti-gay epithets at him and then trying to tell mall security that he had assailed them. A Jan. 5 Buffalo News item said that the victim, who was not named, was harassed while in the Walden Galleria mall in Cheekatawa by about 10 people, who reportedly belonged to a gang. 18-year-old Joy Darden and 19-year-old Deonna Burnett followed the man out of the mall and attacked him with pepper spray. They then punched and kicked him, and stole a bag containing valuable items, including jewelry and money. The stolen goods valued more than $1,000, leading to charges of grand larceny. Burnett was also charged for possession of marijuana.

The women also face possible hate crime charges, which could lead to a harsher penalty if they are convicted.

Police Capt. James Speyer of Cheektowaga did not believe the two incidents had anything to do with one another, telling the Buffalo News, "I believe this is pretty much a coincidence. This is something we rarely see."

The police department of Buffalo has asked for anyone with information on the attack against Harmon to call a confidential line at 847-2255. "Somebody may have seen something, and we’re asking them to come forward," said Michael J. DeGeorge, a department spokesperson.

The suspect’s description is a white woman, between 19 and 23, with blond hair and standing about five and half feet tall, weighting around 120 or 130 pounds. At the time of the attack she was wearing a white coat, blue jeans, and boots. She also sported a tiara that fell off during the attack, the article said.