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...:::
Matthew Shepard :::...
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December 1st 1976 – October 12th 1998
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This is the true story of a young man that believed that in life, the most important thing was to love, and be loved. But two other young men showed him an altogether very sad reality in an unforgiving world, where being different is not permitted. You have to be like everyone else, or pay the price.
At 21 years of age, Matthew is a student in political sciences at the University of Wyoming. He returned to Wyoming after having studied in Switzerland, his parent’s still working in Europe.
Tuesday evening October 6, 1998, Matthew
Shepard leaves with some gay friends to go to the Fireside bar, in Laramie. The friends of Matt go away, and Matt remains alone in the bar in front of a beer. Then, two young men approach him. They ask to him whether he is
gay or not. Matthew
confirms that he is.
His two interlocutors
tell him that they
are also gay and ask
him if he wants to come with them. Trusting them, Matt follows them in their car, which leads them out of the city.
Once they all get to the
destination, the two young men start to strike Matthew
on the head with the the cross of
a 357 Magnum. Matt is alone against two, and he is no match to defend himself against them.
He is a very small
build. His attackers tie him up to a barrier. Matthew feels that they want to kill him and begs them to leave him alive, but his aggressors continue to strike him, so violently that they break his cranium in multiple places. The treatment that the young men subject Matthew to connects with torture: at his arrival at the hospital, Matt presented 14 cuts on the face, of which some enough deep to reach the bone, and of multiple burns on the body. Believing Matthew to be dead, they abandon his body attached to the barrier, like a trophy.
Thus Matthew remains 18 hours at a temperature close to zero, before a cyclist falls at his feet from a VTT. The cyclist initially believes Matt to be a scarecrow. But then he hurries to get help when he sees that Matthew is still breathing. The young amateur of VTT is persuaded that it is a true miracle, which made him fall on Matthew, and thus made it possible for the young man to survive four days and for his family to be with him before his death.
The parents of Matthew return immediately from Saudi Arabia where they work and live. The news of the violent aggression causes a shock in the entire country.
Matthew was transported to the hospital in Powder Valley, in the North of Colorado. He is in a coma and is maintained alive only thanks to machines. His cranium is broken so much that the surgeons gave up operating it. People start gathering up in front of the hospital to pray for him. His parents arrive. At midnight, Sunday October 11, the blood pressure of Matthew falls brutally. His family, present at the hospital, is immediately told of this and goes to his bedside. At 00h53 Monday morning, Matthew dies with his family surrounding him, without ever regaining consciousness.
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