Philly gay-bashing witness - It wasn't self-defense

Philly Mag has reached out and spoken to one of the witnesses of the vicious gay-bashing that took place in Center City last week.

In light of one of the alleged attacker's lawyer bringing up the idea of self-defense, Philly Mag asked the witness what he saw and if the violence could have been motivated by "self-defense."

Here's just a portion of the interview:

Do you have a sense of what set this off?
It seemed to me that the two larger guys were fed up with what the other guys were saying, and one of the victims was pushing one of the women away, but just a little bit. And I could also hear some slurs like "fucking faggot" and I also heard someone say "I am sick of this fucking faggot." If you saw the victims, they were small, not as large as the two guys. And then, it happened so quickly, one of the victims is lying unconscious, bleeding from the head. There wound up being a one- to two-foot puddle of blood where he was hit and knocked unconscious. He wasn't moving. There was a blood stain on the ground until it rained two days later.

Was the whole group of 12 punching and kicking the victims?
Not that I saw when I got over to my window. There was really one guy that inflicted what I saw. The punches I saw from him were what knocked the one guy out. You see those kinds of punches in boxing matches a little bit, but you don't see them in person. It really connected. The guy got knocked out cold.

How did the attack end?
It was a quick thing. Punches were exchanged. And I think that when they realized how serious it was, they went on their way. The women started covering their faces. He hit the concrete and didn't pop back up. When the paramedics got there, it looked like he had two faces on one side of his face. It was serious. You could see all that just within a couple of minutes.

Was police response quick?
Cops were literally there within a minute. Paramedics were literally 30 seconds behind. I was very impressed by the cops.

It's been reported that some of the suspects might be trying to invoke a self-defense argument.
I don't see how it could be self-defense. There were 12 people there. The self-defense thing is a little crazy to me. It wasn't like a guy just threw a punch to protect himself and ran away. That's not what happened here. There were multiple punches to the one guy's face — on both sides of his face.