Brutal Gay Bashing In West Village

The NYPD is asking for tips if anybody witnessed a gay man being brutally assaulted the near the corner of Christopher and 7th Avenue late on Wednesday night. Alan Williams, 50, is in a coma after the attack.

Roving hoodlums were out for blood when they bashed in the head of an accountant on a West Village street Thursday, possibly because he was gay, police said. "I got him good," one of the punks allegedly boasted after the gang jumped Alan Williams, 50, as he was hailing a cab around 2 a.m. Thursday. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the NYPD is investigating the near-fatal beating as a "possible bias attack." Williams was in serious condition in a surgical ICU room at St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan Thursday night - his swollen head wrapped in gauze, a tube down his throat. Put into a medically induced coma so his brain can heal, Williams has not been able to speak to police. Friends said he was openly gay, and police sources said he had a Gay Men's Health Crisis card. He was standing on Seventh Ave. South when a band of four thugs blocked him from getting into two cabs - then clocked him in the face. The blow dropped Williams to the concrete, and his head bounced off the pavement, Kelly said. Passersby tried to stanch the blood with rags from a nearby bar.

I've hailed cabs at that corner, at that hour, many times without noticing any danger, but locals are saying that thugs have been hassling gay men and drag queens there in recent weeks.