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UNC hate crime

I oppose discrimination in any form, but the story of gay UNC student Quinn Matney getting branded by an unknown assailant sounds mighty fishy to me. There are just too many holes in it. I’m reminded of the 2008 Ashley Todd case, where the victim admitted making it all up.

Quinn Matney was having trouble sleeping.

As the freshman took a walk on South Campus at about 3 a.m. on April 4, he said he ran into an acquaintance on the Craige Residence Hall footbridge. As the two spoke, a man sitting at a nearby picnic table stood up and grabbed him by the wrist, he said.

“Here’s a taste of hell you f—-ing fag,” Matney remembered the man saying.

The man branded Matney, who is gay, on the left wrist with an unidentified object, causing third- and fourth-degree burns that damaged three nerves and a tendon, leaving the freshman with no feeling in his thumb and limited mobility in his index finger, he said.

Matney said he tried to pull away — but the man didn’t let go until he received a hard punch to the face.

Update 3:30 PM: Matney was interviewed by the Durham Herald-Sun 7 months ago on his first day at UNC-CH, when Chancellor Thorp visited him and other students moving in.

Update 9:19 PM: Officials now say Matney made the whole thing up.

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  1. agreed…I read this earlier today and it’s pretty screwy.

    How does a guy carry a hot object around with him? Maybe it was a chemically activated heat source?

    Also, unless this guy was an outright flamer, how did he know he was gay?

    The bad part is I’m torn about how to feel? That it actually happened and this guy got hurt? Or it didn’t happen and he’s lying?

  2. All good questions, Scott. It just doesn’t add up.

    If he were attacked, why a hot object? Why not fists? And if he got burned by something, why was his wrist attacked?

    All very odd.

  4. yeah – if you were going to attack someone at 3 in the morning, a hot object would be really hard to conceal (unless it was a blowtorch – which is a whole other kettle of wax)

    has anyone confirmed the injury to his hand? Wouldn’t it be more probably he tried to pull something out of his oven and fell into a shelf or spilled something extremely hot on his wrist out of a pan?

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