On this date in 1999 in Houston, Texas, Roderick Brenneman, 59, was convicted of assaulting a married heterosexual man, Michael Arrington, who Brenneman mistakenly thought was gay. Brenneman received a one-year jail sentence in the knifing of Mr. Arrington, who along with his wife, lived in a downtown Houston neighborhood that also was home to a gay bar. Shouting "pervert" and "homosexual" at Mr. Arrington while he was walking his dog, Brenneman stabbed Mr. Arrington several times including in Mr. Arrington's eye leading to permanent blindness in that eye.

On this date in 2009 the Charles County Maryland Sheriff’s Office arrested and charged a white man, Ronald Christopher Smythers, 21 of La Plata, Maryland, with five counts of malicious destruction of property for his alleged role in a string of acts of vandalism in which racial and ethnic slurs were spray-painted on the Smith Chapel located on Poorhouse Road, the Mount Hope Nanjemoy Elementary School on Ironsides Road, the Calvert Wood Recycling Center sign on Ripley Road, Eller’s Service on Port Tobacco Road, and a stop sign at Annapolis Woods Road and Poorhouse Road, all in western Charles County. Arrested the following day, on February 17, 2009, and also charged with five counts of malicious destruction of property was Kenneth Allen Sanders, 19 of Indian Head, Maryland, who also stands accused of the hate-crime vandalism. The vandalism occurred the week prior to the arrest of Smythers and Sanders.

In Troutdale, Oregon on this date in 2009, it was discovered that someone: spray-painted gang markings, swastikas, the letters KKK and obscene, anti-Semitic slurs on the sides of Cherry Park Presbyterian Church on S.W. Cherry Park Road; spray-painted anti-Semitic graffiti in the Jewish section of the Douglass Cemetery on S.W. Hensley Road; and, vandalized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on S.W. Cherry Park Road across from Reynolds High School. If you have any information about these hate crimes, please call the Troutdale Police Department at (503) 823-3333.