A couple was reportedly assaulted outside a liquor store after being confronted by a group of men over their alleged purchase of Bud Light beer, police suspect.
The incident took place on Saturday night in the city of Vaughn, Ontario, a suburb located just north of Toronto in Canada. York Regional Police said in an official statement that a couple were accosted by a group of three men after leaving a liquor store located at Jane Street and Major Mackenzie Drive West, allegedly pointing to the alleged purchase of Bud Light and Bud Light by the 26-year-old male victim. using various homophobic slurs.
As one of the men approached the male victim, the 27-year-old female victim tried to get between them and prevent the situation from escalating, at which point the suspect physically assaulted her. The other two men got involved and the group began attacking both victims. The group of attackers fled the scene after a passerby intervened. The woman was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of her injuries, while her partner suffered only minor injuries and did not require medical attention.
The Bud Light beer brand became a focus of controversy among conservatives after its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, sent a commemorative can of Bud Light to Dylan Mulvaney, a popular transgender social media influencer, to commemorate her 365 day transition to “childhood”. Although the alleged “partnership” between the beer brand and Mulvaney was only a brief video on social media, the backlash quickly escalated with conservatives threatening to boycott the brand and destroy the cans of the product in the video, while that others allegedly called in bomb threats to the Anheuser-Busch facility.
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“One of the suspects commented on the male victim’s choice of alcohol and uttered derogatory anti-gay slurs as he approached the victim,” the York Regional Police statement explained.
Police also later noted that the victims had not even purchased Bud Light that night, but rather a different, unspecified product that the attackers mistook for Bud Light.
“But it wasn’t. In fact, it didn’t have Bud Light,” a department spokesman said. told Global News. “I guess there were some rainbow colors in the cans, so it started out that way… Then, upon further determination of what they bought, they still weren’t happy with it. Let’s put it that way. And the insults continued .”
Help us identify this suspect and two others wanted for a possible hate-motivated assault that occurred outside a liquor store in the area of Jane St. and Major Mackenzie Dr. W. in Vaughan on Saturday, May 6, 2023, around 8:30 p.m.
More information here: pic.twitter.com/p9LtIrfuB7
— York Regional Police (@YRP) May 9, 2023
A photo of one of the attackers was posted on Twitter in an attempt to appeal for public help in identifying them. He is described as a 25- to 35-year-old man with a slim build, a crew cut, a jawline tattoo, and more tattoos on his hands. At the time of the attack, he was wearing a black adidas jacket with white stripes on the arms, blue jeans and a pair of black and white sneakers with orange heels.
The second suspect was described as a man with black hair and a bushy black beard, who was wearing a red Cristiano Ronaldo Portugal soccer jersey during the attack. A description of the third attacker has not been released, other than the fact that he is also male. The suspects fled the scene in a vehicle with the Ontario registration number CLHL733.
news week contacted York Regional Police by email for comment.