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Man Who Threw Boiling Water On Gay Couple As They Slept Gets 40 Years In Prison

"The pain doesn’t let you sleep," said victim Marquez Tolbert. "It’s just, like, excruciating 24 hours a day,"

The man responsible for pouring scalding water on a gay couple while they were sleeping has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.

On February 12, Martin Blackwell threw a pot of water on Marquez Tolbert and Anthony Gooden while they were in bed, sending them to the emergency room with second and third-degree burns that required multiple surgeries.

"The pain doesn’t let you sleep. It’s just, like, it’s excruciating, 24 hours a day, and it doesn’t go anywhere," said Tolbert in the days after the attack. "It doesn’t dial down, anything. It’s just there."

Blackwell, 48, was convicted on all eight counts of aggravated battery and two counts of aggravated assault. He was not charged with a hate crime, though, as Georgia currently doesn’t have any bias-crime statutes.

He was dating Gooden’s mother, Kim Foster, at the time of the attack and threw the water on the men because he didn’t approve of homosexuality. “Get out of my house with all that gay," Blackwell yelled before his assault.

He told police during questioning, “They were stuck together like two hot dogs... so I poured a little hot water on them and help them out. They’ll be alright. It was just a little hot water."

Kim Foster revealed that, when she saw her son, "I wanted to die."

"Martin is not human," she said of her ex. "He got hatred in his heart and God’s gonna deal with him.”

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover Tolbert's medical bills and expenses.

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