On this date in 2007 in Detroit, Michigan, Andrew Anthos said he was attacked (four days after his 72nd birthday) with a metal pipe in front of his Windsor Tower apartment building after a man accosted him on a city bus, asked him if he was gay, and then proceeded to call him derogatory names before following him off the bus and attacking him. Anthos provided an account of the alleged attack to police, which left him paralyzed from the neck down, before he fell into a coma. Doctors at the Detroit Receiving Hospital performed emergency spinal surgery but were unable to reverse the paralysis. Anthos, who was gay and who was on his way home from the Detroit Public Library at the time of his reported attack, died ten days later. Detroit Police Sgt. Ryan Lovier had said police were investigating the claimed attack, which they initially said was a hate crime. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Anthos, Dr. Carl Schmidt, found no evidence of an attack, however. He concluded Anthos died of natural causes—namely, respiratory failure ultimately caused by an arthritic spine—noting Anthos had degenerative spinal disease.

In Oxnard, California, on this date in 2008, Lawrence King, 15, an eighth grade student at the E.O. Green Junior High School and under the care of the county foster care system, was pronounced brain-dead after being shot in the back of the head on February 12, 2008. The shooter, a 14-year-old eighth-grade classmate of King's who authorities charged as an adult with first-degree murder, Brandon David McInerney, is alleged to have shot King execution style because of King's sexual orientation and because he sometimes wore women's jewelry and make-up to school. Students at the school reported that Lawrence King, who at the time of the shooting attack resided at Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in Camarillo, was often taunted and teased because he had said he was gay and because of his wearing jewelry and makeup. California laws permit someone to be charged with murder when the victim is declared brain-dead, and for teenage defendants to be charged as adults at the age of 14. King later died. McInerney turned 14 years old on January 24, 2008, less than a month before King’s murder, and on August 7, 2008, McInerney pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and a hate crime.