Police Investigate Attack Inside Manny and Olga’s
From Cody Telep. Follow him on Twitter @codywt, email him at cody[AT]borderstan.com.
Crime news from Dupont-Logan-U Street.
Police continue to investigate an attack inside of Manny and Olga’s Pizza at 1841 14th Street NW early Sunday morning. Based on video from the incident posted to WorldstarHipHop.com, a drag performer is involved in a verbal altercation with two females that turns into a physical fight.
The two females seem to instigate the physical fight after one was spit on, although it is not clear if the video shows the entire incident. The performer is identified by Metro Weekly as Heidi Glüm, whose real name is Miles Denaro (although he uses the last name DeNiro).
The video shows Denaro being pulled by the hair and beaten, and at the end of the clip he is bleeding from a head wound.
As Queerty reported, the video shows other customers and employees are slow to break up the altercation, and some seem to be cheering for the fight to continue. Denaro said he suffered cuts on his arms, hair loss, and a huge gash on his head in the incident. Queerty also published Denaro’s tweets from immediately after the attack, in which he claims he did not want to fight back because the attackers were female. He also used racially offensive language in one of his tweets.
Manny & Olga’s Pizza on 14th Street NW. (Luis Gomez Photos)
According to the Washington Blade, both Denaro and one of the females in the video have filed police reports in the incident. Denaro did not call police at the time of the incident but accused both women of simple assault and a hate crime in a report filed Monday with the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Denaro, 24, says the women were making fun of his shoes and makeup and that led to a verbal altercation that turned physical after one of the women slapped him in the face and he spit on her. His report claims, and the video seems to confirm, that he was punched and kicked repeatedly in the incident.
One of the two women in the video, filed a complaint against Denaro accusing him of biting her in the leg and claiming he gave her HIV. That assault was classified in the report as an aggravated assault.
Denaro admitted to the Blade that he bit the woman, but says he did so in self-defense. Denaro, who is HIV positive (according to the Blade), can be heard in the video saying “you’ve got AIDS now,” but it is unclear if this is related to the bite or blood from head wounds sustained in the attack.
Both reports remain under investigation, and police have not yet made any arrests in the case.
Prior to the attack, Denaro was performing as Heidi Glüm just down the block at the Black Cat’s monthly “Gay/Bash” event. Glüm is scheduled to appear at next month’s event on July 12.
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