A hate-filled homophobic Georgia man was sentenced to 40 years in prison after he scalded a sleeping gay couple with boiling water.
Advertisement
The 48-year-old faced up to 80 years in prison, but was sentenced to 40, after being found guilty on all charges.
On Wednesday, Martin Blackwell was convicted on eight counts of aggravated assault for severely burning Anthony Gooden and Marquez Tolbert.
On Feb. 12, Martin Blackwell found his girlfriend’s son and a friend sleeping together after the couple worked an overnight shift.
Anthony Gooden had told his family he was gay shortly before the attack, which happened as Gooden slept on a mattress in his mother’s living room next to Marquez Tolbert, according to the AP.
“You had so many outs where the voice of reason could have taken over”, said the judge, who noted that it “takes a long time” for a pot of water to boil.
Audio clip: Listen to audio clip.
Gooden spent about a month in the hospital – two weeks of that in a medically-induced coma.
Tolbert must now wear compression garments 23 hours a day for the next two years, Gray wrote in an email to The Post, and is attending weekly counseling and physical therapy sessions to deal with his emotional and physical scars.
Tolbert had said the pain of the burns had stopped him from sleeping at night. He showed no emotion as the verdict and sentencing were read.
When Foster’s teenage daughters came home in the afternoon on February 12, Blackwell gave them money to buy something to eat to get them out of the apartment, the girls testified. Blackwell then walked toward Tolbert, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the apartment and out the door, she said.
Prosecutors asked jurors to find Blackwell guilty of aggravated battery for disfigurement and loss of use of body parts and guilty of aggravated assault for dumping the hot water on them.
Advertisement
Gooden and Tolbert are no longer together, but the two have remained friends after surviving such a awful ordeal. A few things we won’t tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING.
