I received an email message Tuesday afternoon from Brian Winfield of Equality Florida about the murder of a gay man that occurred on March 15 in Wahneta, Florida near Winter Haven.
Ryan Keith Skipper, a 25-year-old Polk County man, was viciously murdered and his body left on the side of a road in what the Sheriff's office is classifying as an anti-gay hate crime.
Ryan was brutally stabbed at least 20 times and his car and a laptop computer were stolen. According to witnesses, two suspects drove Ryan's bloody car around and bragged to their friends about savagely killing him.
The Lakeland Ledger http://www.theledger.com/... reports that two suspects have been arrested and a witness told detectives Skipper was killed because he was gay.
The inside of the car was so bloody, according to the Sheriff's Office, that the two cut out a seat belt because they couldn't clean it.
After trying to clean and sell the car, they eventually abandoned it on a dock on Lake Pansy in Winter Haven and set it on fire. But the flames only caused minor damage, and both their fingerprints have been recovered from the car.
The article presents conflicting statements of the suspects and the victim’s roommates and friends in a very complicated story.
"We're appreciative and grateful for the Sheriff's Office. They worked around the clock and in the first 72 hours arrested the individuals. We're disappointed and discouraged by the comments (Polk Sheriff) Grady Judd made that appeared to be blaming the victim," said Damien Skipper, Ryan's older brother.
Sheriff's Chief W. J. Martin acknowledges that what was said was based on comments from the two suspects. "Unfortunately, Ryan Skipper is not here to tell his side," said Martin, who heads the agency's criminal investigations bureau. "In these kind of cases you have two suspects trying to minimize their involvement to make themselves look better."
Equality Florida is planning statewide vigils on April 14.