Boaters rescue group hurling anti-gay abuse at them after their boat explodes
It could be viewed as a dramatic demonstration of the concept of karma: a group of young boaters hurling homophobic abuse towards another vessel flying gay pride flags, then needing to be rescued by their intended victims when their own boat explodes into a ball of flame.
Sunday’s incident on Washington state’s Lake Moses occurred two days before the start of June, which is known as gay pride month because of demonstrations and celebrations centered on the annual pride parades in cities around the world to commemorate the Stonewall uprising for LGBTQ equal rights in New York in 1969.
Video of last weekend’s happenings has gone viral on TikTok, amassing more than 8m views and prompting an investigation by the Grant county sheriff, Tom Jones.
“We got them out of the water safely, we were nicer than they were,” the video’s author posted alongside the clip, noting that the three people rescued, two men and a woman, did not offer any thanks.
According to an account of the incident in the Washington Post, a boater named Robbie, who did not give his last name for fear of retaliation, was enjoying a day on the lake swimming, tubing and listening to music with his brother and two friends. He said their boat was displaying a variety of gay pride and rainbow flags.
At about 7pm he said they noticed another boat passing by with its occupants yelling at them. “I could clearly hear the words gays and flags being shouted from their boat,” he told the Post.
The video shows a woman in the boat flipping her middle finger as they sped by, and according to Robbie the boat made a sharp turn and then circled around them at least six times, spraying water on to them and causing their boat to rock.
The boat sped away, he said, and seconds later they heard an explosion and saw black smoke rising from the other vessel.
“Holy crap! They blew up!” a man purported to be Robbie’s brother says on the video.
Subsequent footage shows the three occupants of the burning boat swimming towards the one with the pride flags, and being urged to climb onboard, while one of the rescuers calls the emergency 911 service number. The woman is heard shouting: “Help us, we’re burning.”
“The passengers were quite rude, shouting over us, ignoring my [questions] about their wellbeing when on the 911 call and smoking a vape pen on our boat without even so much as asking if they could,” Robbie told the Post.
A second clip shows the conclusion of the incident: the rescued boaters speeding away on a friend’s boat while the crew of a police vessel attempts to douse the flames by churning up water with its propellers, then towing it away.
“These people harassed my family because we were flying gay pride flags in Moses Lake, Washington, by racing around us and shouting gay slurs. Then, their boat literally blew up!” Robbie said in a tweet accompanied by the hashtag #KarmaIsReal.
In a statement posted to Facebook, Jones confirmed that his office was investigating, but needed information about the identities of those involved.
“We would like to know more, and once we can interview people, we will be able to know more without relying solely on a brief video,” he said.
Jones later told the Post that detectives were speaking to the boat owners “to determine if a crime occurred”.
