Eleven teen boys in the Chicago area were charged with felony crimes after two gay men were lured and beaten last summer using gay dating apps, according to police.
The teens, all males aged 16 and 17, took inspiration for the crimes from a viral social media trend, the Mount Prospect Police Department said in a statement, without elaborating.
Related:
Several similar incidents in the U.S. and countries where Grindr and other gay hook-up apps are popular have seen so-called “post and boast” attacks surge over the last year.
Stay connected to your community
Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter.
The recent assaults occurred on July 8, 2024, when two men were attacked minutes apart in separate incidents in the Village of Mount Prospect, according to a police description and associated charges announced last week.
Around 9:45 p.m. that night, a 41-year-old man reported he’d been beaten by “a group of teenagers” in a parking lot in 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.”
The man was followed some distance by the boys when he fled in his car but was able to get escape, police said.
About 10 minutes later, police responded to another call reporting a battery. A 23-year-old had arranged to meet another gay man through an unnamed dating app just a mile away from the location of the first incident. He, too, was approached by teen males who beat him.
The victim was able to flee in his car, but didn’t get far before realizing his tires had been slashed and gone flat. He asked a resident nearby to call 911, police said, and was transported from the scene by the Mount Prospect Fire Department to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
“The Mount Prospect Police Detectives were able to locate video surveillance footage that captured the incident at 606 West Northwest Highway and were able to identify some of the offenders in the video,” police said. “An extensive investigation was conducted where 11 total juveniles were identified as taking part in one or both incidents.”
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.
All of the alleged assailants turned themselves in and were arrested and charged between November 11 and November 20, 2024.
During the investigation, detectives said some of the teenage offenders were inspired by similar assaults seen online, known colloquially as “post and boast” attacks. “Post and boast” refers to the trend where someone commits a crime and posts it to social media, like Snapchat or TikTok, to brag about it.
“We are asking parents to take these incidents as an opportunity to talk with their teenage children about the seriousness of actively participating in these types of trends they see on social media,” said Police Chief Michael Eterno.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
