Philly Man Allegedly Beaten to Death After Using Grindr
Philadelphia police say a gay man was beaten to death after meeting someone on the popular gay hookup app Grindr, Philadelphia's ABC-affiliate station WPVI reports.
According to WPVI, a passerby found the body of Dino Dizdarevic, 25, Friday at the bottom of a fire escape in Chester, Pa., (about 16-and-a-half-miles west of Philadelphia).
Dizdarevic was missing last Wednesday. When his body was discovered, he reportedly had suffered blunt force trauma to the head. According to police sources, Dizdarevic, a chemical engineer working in New Jersey, met up with someone from Grindr. WPVI reports investigators have Dizdarevic's phone as evidence.
According to Philly.com, Dizdarevic's body was partly clothed and he had no wallet on him.
"It was awful. I don't think there are any words that could actually describe what I felt or even my family," Dino's sister Una Dizdarevic, 22, told WPVI. "He would just light the entire room up itself. He was so intelligent and so many people cared about him."
Dizdarevic, who graduated from the University of Louisville last year, and his family were refugees from Bosnia.
"I definitely could not believe that somebody who had been through all that with me could just so easily be taken like that," Una Dizdarevic said.
Philly.com reports Una Dizdarevic was waiting for her brother at a Kentucky airport Thursday for Derby weekend - but he never showed up.
"That's when I realized he was missing, because he wouldn't do that to anybody," she told the website. "He would have let somebody know."
The victim moved to Philadelphia with his boyfriend, Nick McBee, 27, last August. Both his sister and partner are unsure why Dizdarevic would go to Chester, Pa., since had never been there before.
"I don't think he even knew anything about Chester," McBee, who dated Dizdarevic for two-years, told Philly.com. He added the last time he talked to his boyfriend was Wednesday, when Dizdarevic said he was going to visit a friend "south of the airport." McBee is unsure how he got to Chester, since he had a drink before leaving and left his car near their apartment.
"We don't know a thing," McBee said. "We think it was a cab, but we don't know."
Philly.com reports McBee "balked at discussing" the possibility of his boyfriend using hookup sites.
"The only thing we can say is that he was brutally assaulted and strangled. We just don't know," he said.
Still, a friend Dizdarevic D told Philly.com that Dizdarevic sometimes used websites and dating apps to meet people.
This isn't the first time a man was assaulted in Philadelphia after using Grindr. It was reported last month that a 34-year-old Canadian man visiting the city invited another man he met on gay social media app to his hotel room.
When the man arrived, he allegedly held the Canadian man at gunpoint and sexually assaulted him. According to the police report, the victim was forced to buy the man four $500 Visa gift cards and took him to four separate ATMs to withdraw $200.
A similar incident occurred in December 2013, when three homeless men used Grindr to meet a 71-year-old man in Michigan before they allegedly robbed and killed him.
Additionally, it was reported Monday that police are accusing Delaware's deputy attorney general of raping a teen boy he met on Grindr.