Sal Trejo: Salt Lake City man records alleged assault

It was closing time Saturday and Sal Trejo waited for an Uber car to pick him up, as well as a group of friends, in the night from Salt Lake City.

An unidentified man was also searching for his vehicle. Trejo, 29, said that the man had told someone on the phone that he was standing next to a "gay man".

Trejo is a "proud gay man," he told Washington Post on Monday, and the man in green t-shirts did not know him. It was rude and disturbing, he said, that a stranger approached him and said it. He said his friends intervened.

Trejo said that he had taken out his phone to start recording after the man had used an anti-gay insult. In an eight-second video, the man seemed to want to confirm one thing. "But are you gay?" He asked Trejo.

"Oh, I am," says Trejo. The man replied, "Oh, so you're gay." Then he straightened up.

Trejo answered, "Yes, but you called me …" before the man cut him off with a swing.

The man hit on Trejo's arm, he said later. Trejo's phone landed on the floor as several spectators gasped. The man was arrested before the police arrived and before Trejo gave a report to the police, Trejo said.

[Focus of Jussie Smollett assault investigation has ‘shifted,’ Chicago police say]

Trejo posted the video on Twitter, calling for help to identify the alleged attacker. "I want people safe," he said. "Nobody wants to feel in danger in his city."

The suspect cooperates with the investigation, the Salt Lake City Police Department says on Twitter, where they posted the Trejo video. Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski also posted the video.

The detective assigned to the case did not return a request for comment. It is not known how the police located the suspect or what role the video played in the search.

The incident comes as part of an investigation into a hate crime involving actor Jussie Smollett. The actor "Empire" said that after leaving a restaurant in Chicago last month, two men had assaulted him because he was black and gay. However, after questioning and releasing two people of interest without charge, the police said that new information had "changed the trajectory of the investigation".

CNN, citing unknown police officers, said the police were considering the possibility that Smollett had orchestrated the assault.

Smollett's attorneys Todd S. Pugh and Victor P. Henderson dismissed the report. "He is once again the victim of accusations attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack," they told CNN in a statement. "Nothing is further from the truth and anyone who claims otherwise is lying."

Trejo said that as a "queer colored person," he feared that the assault would raise similar doubts about his own story. His mother and his friends advised him to pay attention to the news of the incident, he said. But the difference here, he explained, is that he had a video of the incident associated with testimonials.

Utah State Senator Derek Kitchen (D), the only member of the openly homosexual state legislature, cited the alleged assault as a new impetus to advance hate crime laws in Canada. Utah. "It is time for the UT legislature to act on hate crime legislation" wrote on Twitter.

The Republicans have withheld the bill, reported the Salt Lake City Tribune. According to the publication, no law on hate crimes has been passed.

Trejo said the video was hard to watch, but he hoped the publication would give a sense of responsibility.

"We live in the digital age," he said. "People will know what you did."

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