Mother Continues Awareness Campaign Months After Son's Robbery and Death
A grieving mother is helping to shed light on a string of robberies and druggings that have plagued NYC gay nightlife over the past few months.
As reported by ABC News, Linda Clary's 33-year-old son, John Umberger, "was found dead in June after he was last seen walking out of a midtown Manhattan bar with two strangers."
Umberger was in New York City for work and was out earlier with his friends but was later at the bar alone.
"It's the worst phone call that any mother can ever get and ever want to get," Clary told ABC News. "It's the greatest pain and anguish of anything."
Someone used Umberger's phone and credit cards to steal more than $20,000, Clary explained. According to police, both Lidocaine, a numbing agent, and fentanyl were found in his system.
"Detectives presented it as, it looked like a drug overdose, and that perhaps John had gone out to the bars and had been robbed and was so depressed, he took a bunch of drugs," Clary said. However, she refused to believe that her son caused his own death. Flying from Atlanta to New York, Clary found similar stories among those who survived similar situations and began pressing the police for answers.
Brian Luke said he was targeted by two men in a different part of the city.
"I feel like I was targeted, probably because I was alone and probably because I was already a bit drunk when I arrived at the bar. And my memory from that point is pretty fuzzy. I can't say for sure whether or not they drugged me," Luke said, after taking the men home.
"I think they did some level of due diligence to look into what I had reported, but I don't think I was taken quite as seriously as I would have hoped," Luke said about the police investigation.
Oscar Alarcon had a similar story and a similar experience with reporting the incident to police. ells a similar story.
"I went to the police. They never took me seriously. They made me feel like it was my fault, like I did it to myself," Alarcon said.
"Then in April, just outside the same gay bar that Alarcon went to, 25-year-old Julio Ramirez was seen getting into a cab with three unknown men," ABC News reports. Ramirez was later found to have passed away while in the back seat of a cab.
"People have been hurt. People feel scared and afraid, and this has gone on too long," Clary said, "because it is clear to me from people who have reached out to me, this has happened since 2018."