Josie Smith-Malave Former Top Chef Contestant Gay Bashed at Long Island Bar
September 12, 2007 – 9:10 amPosted Under: food
Josie Smith-Malave, a Miami woman who competed in Season Two of the Bravo Network reality series “Top Chef,” was beaten as she left a bar in Long Island, N.Y, by a gang of about 10 attackers who yelled anti-gay epithets at her, her lawyer announced Tuesday.
Smith-Malave is openly lesbian, a fact that is known to those who have followed her career as a chef and professional women’s tackle football player.
Her sister, who is not gay, was also injured in the Labor Day weekend attack in Sea Cliff, N.Y., lawyer Yetta Kurland said.
Her lawyer says she was among a small group of women asked to leave a New York bar over Labor Day weekend. About 10 young people followed the women out of the bar in Sea Cliff and began screaming anti-gay epithets, spitting on them and then beating them.
Kurland says the incident should be investigated as a hate crime.
According to the New York Daily News, “Kurland said the trouble started when the women went to Partners bar in Sea Cliff over the Labor Day weekend for a drink and began dancing together. Smith-Malave’s sister is straight. Bar employees escorted the women out a side door after other patrons began making nasty remarks and the mood started getting ugly, Kurland said. Kurland said as many as 10 ‘young adults’ followed the women out, circled them, screamed anti-gay slurs, spit on them and then punched and kicked them. A camera belonging to one of them was stolen, she said. Nassau police said they were investigating, but had made no arrests.”
The women suffered bruises, and one received injuries to her head.
Nassau County police say they are investigating, but they declined to provide details of the incident.
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