North Texas man attacked in Austin

Andy Smith and Paul von Wupperfeld were walking south along Austin’s Colorado Street on April 18, at about 10:25 p.m., when a truck “came barreling out of the parking lot on our left, almost hitting us,” Smith wrote in his statement to Austin police. “I hollered out, ‘you nearly hit us.’ To which the driver replied, ‘Fuck you faggot.’”

Smith responded, “What did you say?”

“Fuck you faggot,” the man answered. He stopped his truck in a lane of traffic, got out and the exchange escalated.

Smith told him he couldn’t call them that.

“You make me stop,” he said. “I’ll kick your ass.”

Smith wrote that he thinks he said, “What are you going to do? Hit me?”

Before he was knocked unconscious, Smith wrote, he remembered seeing a mean look on the man’s face.

Von Wupperfeld, Smith’s husband, continued the narrative in a separate statement to police.

After hitting Smith, Von Wupperfeld wrote, the man ran to his car and drove off. But he stopped to see what happened. By the time von Wupperfeld reached Smith, he told police, Smith’s “face was swollen and bloody from where he had been punched, with cuts on his nose, right cheek and chin. He was unconscious for around 30-45 seconds. When he came around he was groggy and disoriented.”

A number of witnesses saw the assault and took video with their phones. Police were called and responded quickly.
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Pictures taken at the scene included the license plate number on the pickup driven by the man who attacked Smith, allowing police to trace the pickup to Anthony Fera, president of an Austin-based oil company. He’s best known as the father of University of Texas Longhorn football team’s 2013 star placekicker.

Fera has been arrested several other times in Texas and Pennsylvania.

Austin Police Det. Jason Barto said evidence has been sent to the district attorney’s office and it’s up to them to present evidence to the grand jury to decide whether to add hate crime charges.

Rafael McDonnell, Resource Center communications and advocacy manager, said this week he worries that this sort of thing might happen more as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares for its marriage equality ruling.

North Texas man attacked in Austin