Man robbed at gunpoint during Grindr hook-up
Two men have been arrested in Florida after using Grindr to carry out a robbery.
Royquez Darrell Deloach, 19, and Taborice Lee Foster, 21, were arrested by Panama City Police Department in connection with the incident.
According to court documents, the pair are accused of robbing a man after arranging a rendezvous with him using gay dating app Grindr.
The perpetrators created a fake profile on the app in order to find a victim, before arranging a hook-up and luring him to their home.
Officers wrote: “The victim arrived and was attacked from behind by [Deloach] with a black and green handgun while [Foster] was searching the victim’s pockets.
“The victim’s wallet was ultimately taken by [Foster].”
Deloach and Foster were later arrested on charges including armed robbery and taken to the Bay County Jail.
According to the Panama City News Herald, the pair admitted to the robbery during a police interview, while the firearm was recovered from their home.
Deloach, who was also wanted on a burglary charge, is being hold on a combined bond of $65,000.
Foster is being held on a $55,000 bond on charges of armed robbery and unlawful use of a communication device.
There has been a boom in crimes enabled by Grindr in recent years, as thugs turn to the hook-up app as an easy way to find victims.
Last week, 21-year-old Nigel Garrett was sentenced to 15 years in prison for violently assaulting a man in a Grindr-related attack..
Garrett and three other men used Grindr to find a victim, using a fake profile to arrange a hook-up at the victim’s home.
The gun-toting homophobes then turned up at the victim’s home before overpowering him, tying him up with tape, physically assaulting him, and screaming anti-gay slurs.
They proceeded to ransack the property, before making a getaway with the victim’s valuables and motor vehicle.
According to the plea agreement, “Garrett admitted that he, Anthony Shelton, and Chancler Encalade used Grindr, a social media dating platform for gay men, to arrange to meet the victim at the victim’s home.
“Upon entering the victim’s home, the defendants restrained the victim with tape, physically assaulted the victim, and made derogatory statements to the victim for being gay. The defendants brandished a firearm during the home invasion, and they stole the victim’s property, including his motor vehicle.”
Because Texas does not have hate crime laws protecting gay people, he faced a federal hate crime conviction under the The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which allows the Justice Department to target criminals in states with no such protections.
The indictment also charged the defendants with conspiring to cause bodily injury because of the victims’ sexual orientation during four home invasions in Plano, Frisco, and Aubrey, Texas, from January 17 to February 7, 2017.
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Anthony Shelton, Chancler Encalade, and Cameron Ajiduah subsequently pleaded guilty to hate crime charges from this indictment, and all three await sentencing.
In the UK, Grindr serial killer Stephen Port was last year jailed for life in relation with four killings.
Port was found guilty of murdering Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, and Jack Taylor.
The former chef hunted young gay men on hook-up apps, before luring them to his house, drugging them with GHB, and sexually assaulting them. Some victims, who have been granted anonymity, survived the attacks.
The killings took place between June 2014 and September 2015, but a series of police blunders meant officers failed to make connections between them or investigate Port, who was already known to authorities.
An Independent Police Complaints Commission probe of the Port case is ongoing, over allegations that police officers missed a string of red flags that Port was connected to the deaths.
The families of the victims allege that the police failed to take their deaths seriously due to the connection to gay hook-up culture and chemsex scene.
