AMHERST — A man familiar to customers at an Amherst restaurant, where he worked alongside his family, is recuperating from serious injuries he suffered in an assault and battery incident that is being investigated as a possible hate crime near Yale University over Labor Day weekend.
With a broken jaw and facial fractures, along with two staples to his scalp, Franklin Rosa recently underwent both oral and facial surgery to realign his teeth and jaw, according to a GoFundMe fundraiser put together by his girlfriend, Claudia Gaebler.
Since being discharged from a hospital about a week after the incident, Rosa has been recuperating at his mother’s home, according to his sister, Jocelyn.
Like his sister and mother, Rosa had worked at the Bueno y Sano in Amherst. He graduated from Belchertown High School in 2015 and had been a member of its football team.
At the Main Street restaurant near the main counter, his picture is on a poster along with a description of what happened, and QR code allowing people to directly access the fundraiser.
In the account posted to GoFundMe at gofundme.com/f/support-victim-of-racial-violence-on-yale-campus, Gaebler, a University of Massachusetts graduate last spring who is now a postgraduate associate in the Child Study Center at Yale School of Medicine, wrote that she was with her boyfriend and two others early Sept. 3 when a group of white men hurled racial epithets at Rosa, a Latino man.
“My partner tried to ask why they were swinging at him and calling him these horrible names, and this angered them even more,” Gaebler wrote.
Gaebler added that a group of Yale students saw Rosa on the ground after the attack and came to help, with one, an EMT, wrapping his head and assisting him in getting to Yale New Haven Hospital.
The incident is being jointly investigated by New Haven, Yale University and Connecticut State Police. The city department is taking the lead as the incident location was near city businesses.
During a press conference a few days after the incident, New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson said the attack occurred at 12:16 a.m. Sept. 3 at 284 York St.
“Besides the serious assault, there were some racial slurs, so it may be a bias and hate crime, and we’re treating it as if it is,” Jacobson said.
The department has been provided videos of the incident, taken both by a bystander and from surveillance cameras, and Yale is looking into whether security cameras may have captured more of the assault, he said.
There was confusion initially about the incident, as officers interviewed Rosa at the hospital twice, once in the early morning and then in the evening.
The incident was first reported by the Yale Daily News, and Jacobson acknowledged the department should have moved more quickly in its response due to the nature of the incident. He said he is hoping that video will lead to identifying and arresting suspects, noting that what is seen on the video is a group of possibly five white males, along with some females, leading up to the attack by at least two of the men.
Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell issued a statement expressing sorrow for what happened.
“I share your anger, disgust, and heartbreak at the prospect of a racially motivated crime so close to our own campus,” Campbell wrote. “My life’s mission has been to create and maintain a sense of safety and security for every single member of the Yale and New Haven communities, and to be especially sensitive toward the marginalized members of our communities for whom safety, whether perceived or experienced, has often been elusive.”
The GoFundMe account has raised $12,775 of a $15,000 goal.
