AMHERST — A man familiar to customers at an Amherst restaurant, where he worked alongside his family, is recuperating from serious injuries he suffered in an assault and battery incident that is being investigated as a possible hate crime near Yale University over Labor Day weekend.
With a broken jaw and facial fractures, along with two staples to his scalp, Franklin Rosa recently underwent both oral and facial surgery to realign his teeth and jaw, according to a GoFundMe fundraiser put together by his girlfriend, Claudia Gaebler.
Since being discharged from a hospital about a week after the incident, Rosa had been recuperating at his mother’s home, according to his sister, Jocelyn.
Like his sister and mother, Rosa had worked at the Bueno y Sano in Amherst. He graduated from Belchertown High School in 2015 and had been a member of its football team.
At the Main Street restaurant near the main counter, his picture is on a poster along with a description of what happened, and QR code allowing people to directly access the fundraiser.
In the account posted to GoFundMe at gofundme.com/f/support-victim-of-racial-violence-on-yale-campus, Gaebler, a University of Massachusetts graduate last spring who is now a postgraduate associate in the Child Study Center at Yale School of Medicine, wrote that she was with her boyfriend and two others early Sept. 3 when a group of white men hurled racial epithets at Rosa, a Latino man.
“My partner tried to ask why they were swinging at him and calling him these horrible names, and this angered them even more,” Gaebler wrote.
Gaebler added that a group of Yale students saw Rosa on the ground after the attack and came to help, with one, an EMT, wrapping his head and assisting him in getting to Yale New Haven Hospital.
The incident is being jointly investigated by New Haven, Yale University and Connecticut State Police. The city department is taking the lead as the incident location was near city businesses.
During a press conference a few days after the incident, New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson said the attack occurred at 12:16 a.m. Sept. 3 at 284 York St.
“Besides the serious assault, there were some racial slurs, so it may be a bias and hate crime, and we’re treating it as if it is,” Jacobson said.
The department has been provided videos of the incident.