Sean Gonzalez cannot sleep.
He called NBC 5 in the middle of the night Thursday to share the story of his recent attack, which was the latest in a series of robberies and possible hate crimes in Dallas' Oak Lawn community.
"At the point that the gun hit my head, I closed my eyes and the only thing I thought was, 'I'm dying. I'm going to die tonight,'" Gonzalez said from his couch, at nearly 3:30 a.m.
Gonzalez was approached by two men, one armed with a handgun, at about 1:30 a.m. Monday while walking home from work near the intersection of Lemmon Avenue and Reagan Street.
A man with a slight frame, a goatee and a "scraggly appearance" approached Gonzalez from the front and blocked his path, he said. A second man came up behind Gonzalez and put a gun to his head while the first man silently emptied his pockets.
After the men stole Gonzalez' cash and cellphone, they knocked him to the ground and began hitting and kicking him, Gonzalez told NBC 5. Then they began to call him hateful slurs.
"Nobody should hear those words," Gonzalez said. "I don't care who you are. You're a human being. I don't care if you're gay, straight, lesbian. I don't care. If anything, you're a human being and you deserve to live with respect."
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Gonzalez said he doesn't know if he was targeted by his attackers or if he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He told NBC 5 he hopes to someday be able to speak with and help other survivors of similar crimes, but that the incident is far too fresh for him to help anyone now.
"When something like this happens to you, you can't just bounce back right away," he said. "And now I'm not going to walk back, I'm not going to walk home. It's not going to happen."
