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An eighth suspect has been arrested in a series of brutal, anti-gay hate crimes against four men, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Saturday, leaving one last suspect at large.

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

The incident involved three victims being held against their will by as many as nine assailants who beat them in a vacant apartment and sodomized two of them, Kelly said Friday. A fourth victim was beaten and robbed in connection with the attacks, Kelly said.

The string of attacks, which occurred Sunday, began when members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King Goonies learned that an aspiring member is gay, authorities said.

"I was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened at the anti-gay bias that contributed to them," Bloomberg said Saturday. "Hate crimes such as these strike fear into all of us."

According to Kelly, the 17-year-old pledge was forced into an unoccupied apartment around 3:30 a.m. Sunday and questioned about his contact with a 30-year-old man. He was thrown into a wall, forced to strip naked, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger, the commissioner said.
At about 8:30 p.m Sunday, another 17-year-old was beaten and questioned about the same 30-year-old man, robbed of jewelry and held against his will in the same vacant apartment, Kelly said.

At 9:30 p.m., the 30-year-old man was lured to the location where that 17-year-old was being held, was forced to strip naked and was tied to a chair opposite the teenager, Kelly said. The teenager was forced to hit the older male several times in the face and burn him with cigarettes, after which the suspects assaulted him with their fists and a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat, the commissioner said. The 30-year-old man was later dumped outside his home, he added.

Five of the suspects then went to the apartment the 17-year-old victim shared with his older brother and let themselves in using a key they'd taken from the man, Kelly explained. They beat the man's brother and demanded money from him.

When he refused, the assailants put a cell phone to his ear and he heard his younger brother say that he was being held against his will and to "give them the money," the commissioner said. The older brother told the suspects where they could find the money, after which they tied him up and left the apartment, Kelly added.

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