PHILADELPHIA GAY BASHING SUSPECT IS DAUGHTER OF POLICE CHIEF

One of three people charged with the recent brutal Philadelphia gay bashing of two men has turned out to be a police chief’s daughter.

Arrest warrants have been issued for Katherine Knott, 24, together with Philip Williams, 24, and Kevin Harrigan, 26, in connection with the assault.

It’s now been discovered that Knott is the daughter of Pennsylvania Police Chief Karl Knott.

Posts to her twitter feed have come under the microscope since her arrest and appear to show her as being homophobic, racist and something of a brat.

In 2012 she expressed her disgust at seeing two men kiss, said that playing the jazz flute “is for little fairy boys” and even tweeted about alleged special treatment from her father.

ABC 6 reports that Knott has now also been suspended from her job as an emergency room technician.

Knott and the two other suspects are accused of being part of a “well-dressed” group of 10 to 12 allegedly inebriated former students of a local Catholic school who beat up the un-named gay men in Center City earlier this month.

They did so apparently without provocation while shouting anti-gay slurs. Both men, in their late 20s, were hospitalised with serious facial injuries, with one of the victims requiring surgery to his jaw.

The three accused have been charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and criminal conspiracy.

They have all handed themselves in to police. Knott’s lawyer said that she had not taken part in the assault while Williams’ lawyer described the incident as a “mutual confrontation” in which his client “was not the aggressor” and insisted that it had nothing to do with the couple’s sexual orientation.

Local LGBT rights activists have called on the state of Pennsylvania to change its hate crime laws to include sexual orientation, which is currently excluded.