64-Year-Old Gay Man Chases Down Attacker Who Punched Him, Called Him “Faggot”

“He was running away, and I just thought, ‘Hell, no.'"

From: NewNowNext

 Earlier this month, Richard Schiwietz was walking down State Street in Santa Barbara with a male friend when another man suddenly approached them. With his middle finger up, the man accosted the pair, yelling: “Faggot! Your mother’s a whore!”

Schiwietz, 64, told the man to stop, but he refused. According to Schiwietz, he turned to the friends and shouted: “You say one more word, and I’m going to coldcock you.”

“Try it,” the 64-year-old replied. Seemingly taking this as a challenge, the man then assaulted him.

“He punched the side of my head and knocked my glasses off,” Schiwietz remarked. His friend, Saul Lerma, tried to intervene, but the assailant had fled the scene.

Schiwietz remembers yelling “Stop! What are you doing?” before taking after the man himself.

“He was running away, and I just thought, ‘Hell, no,’” Schiwietz told reporters. He quickly followed the man down an alleyway toward the De la Guerra Plaza, where he cornered him in the back parking lot of the World Market.

There, the man yelled obscenities at local cashiers before authorities showed up to arrest him. Once they took him into custody, police told Schiwietz that he was known to law enforcement.

The man, 54-year-old John Savala, was booked into County Jail. Following an investigation of the attack, District Attorney Joyce Dudley decided to charge him with a felony hate crime.

Though Schiwietz says he’s encountered homophobia over the course of his life, in the 15 years that he’s lived in Santa Barbara, he’s known it to be a progressive community.

“As a gay man, I’ve found it to be a liberal town, a very accepting town,” he explained. “There’s really not an issue among my peers.”

Dudley affirmed this sentiment, saying the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes in Santa Barbara is uncommon. This, however, doesn’t mean they don’t ever happen.

“The more difficult question is how often do they occur [but are] not recorded?” she commented.

When asked what kind of punishment he believes Savala deserves, Schiwietz was unable to offer a clear answer. While he’s glad that Dudley has pressed felony charges, he himself is just trying to move on from the episode.

“I’ve dealt with that all my life,” he concluded. “I choose not to be angry about it and just realize it is other people’s ignorance.”