Four men guilty of hate crime for beating gay couple in South Beach but avoid jail time

On Monday, almost five years after pummeling a couple during a South Beach gay pride parade, four men were found guilty of a hate crime — but also managed to avoid jail.

The quartet, who in February failed to convince a judge that they were defending themselves under the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground defense, were found guilty of a pair of felony battery charges and sentenced to five years of probation. They’re also required to do 200 hours of community service and take anger management and substance abuse classes.

But before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan agreed to grant the plea deal, all four were required to apologize to Dmitry Logonov and Rene Chalarca for the 2018 attack just outside a public restroom on Ocean Drive and Sixth Street.

Their statements were brief.

“I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn from my mistakes,” said Adonis Diaz.

“I’m here to offer my sincere apologies. My actions that day don’t define who I am or how I was raised,” said Pablo Reinaldo Romo-Figueroa. Also sentenced were Juan Carlo Lopez and Luis M. Alonso-Piovet. The men were 20 or 21 at the time of the attack.

The convictions in the attack, which drew national headlines and galvanized South Florida’s LGBTQ community, pleased Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

“As a community, we must always come together to address issues of violence, especially when it is rooted in prejudice and hate,” she said.

Monday’s relatively short hearing also included a statement from Logonov, who said he moved to the U.S. to avoid persecution over his sexual orientation, the very issue that has consumed his life for most of the past five years. His statement was read by Hate Crimes Unit Division Chief Justin Funck.

“Today, I’m taking a chance to rebuild my life,” Logonov wrote. “I believe these gentlemen should have that chance, too.”

Logonov and Chalarca, who both attended Monday’s sentencing, quickly left the courtroom without giving any interviews.

According to police and witness accounts, Logonov and his boyfriend Chalarca were holding hands and had just left the bathroom line on April 8, 2018, when Logonov accidentally brushed into Lopez. After yelling a slur in Spanish at the couple, Lopez attacked with the help of his three friends.

The beating, some of it captured on surveillance video, was brutal enough that Logonov was briefly knocked unconscious. Another man who tried to stop the attack was knocked out after hitting his head on the curb. Two days later, after their pictures were released and police asked for the public’s help in finding the suspects, they turned themselves in.

All were charged with aggravated battery, which was later upgraded to a hate crime. Lopez spent 37 days in jail. They were looking at possible sentences of up to 30 years.

Last February, in a desperate attempt to avoid prosecution, the four tried to convince Fajardo Orshan that they were only defending themselves, and would invoke the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which eliminates a citizen’s duty to retreat before countering a threat.

But the judge, who showed the video in court, said she saw nothing in the video that indicated any of the four were in any way threatened. With that out of the way, she said the case could move towards trial. But that was avoided when the sides reached an agreement.

“I want to offer our sincere apology for the way some of our citizens have behaved,” Judge Fajardo Orshan said to the couple after the sentencing. She called it “incredible” that they found it within themselves to let the four young men get a chance to move on with their lives. “I applaud you.”