[Updates Below] A 32-year-old man was fatally shot in the middle of Greenwich Village after a shouting match last night. According to police, the victim was shot once in the head at the corner of West 8th Street and 6th Avenue near Gray's Papaya around midnight. “It was a quickie. He shot him and he went straight to the ground,” a bouncer at a nearby club told the Post. “Half his body was lying on the sidewalk and half was on the street.”

The victim, whose name hasn't been released yet, was taken to Beth Israel Hospital, where he died. The suspect ran from the scene, but police caught up to him about five blocks away at West 3rd Street and MacDougal Street. Police added that they recovered the gun. The Post claims the shooter confessed after he was placed into custody.

Update: Speaker Christine Quinn announced that this incident is being investigated as a hate crime. “I am horrified to learn that last night, a gay man was murdered in my district after being chased out of a Greenwich Village restaurant and assailed by homophobic slurs," she said in a statement. "I stand with all New Yorkers in condemning this attack."

If so, this would be the fourth such hate crime that targeted a gay man in the last two weeks in Manhattan. "There was a time in New York City when hate crimes were a common occurrence," she added. "There was a time in New York City when two people of the same gender could not walk down the street arm-in-arm without fear of violence and harassment. We refuse to go back to that time. This kind of shocking and senseless violence, so deeply rooted in hate, has no place in a City whose greatest strength will always be its diversity."

“I am outraged by the recent wave of anti-LGBT violence in our City and it is shocking and extremely distressing that a man was shot to death just this morning apparently because he was gay," said NY State Senator Brad Hoylman. "It is particularly upsetting that recent anti-LGBT incidents have occurred in neighborhoods in my district on the West Side of Manhattan, home to many members of our community."

Update: Police Commissioner Ray Kelly revealed more details about the fatal shooting last night: the 32-year-old victim was walking with a friend when they were approached by three men. One man snarled homophobic slurs at them and asked them if they were “gay wrestlers,” Kelly said. One of the suspects left, but the other two pursued the victims down the street.

“Do you want to die here?” Kelly said the shooter asked the victim. He pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot him once in the cheek. “This is clearly a hate crime,” Kelly told reporters.

After the suspect was taken in for questioning, he allegedly confessed to the crime. Also, Kelly said the suspect was involved in another altercation 20 minutes before the shooting—he allegedly urinated on the wall of bar Annisa, on Barrow and West Fourth Streets. When a bartender confronted him, the suspect threatened to shoot him if he called the cops, and said: “Don’t you know I’m wanted? Do you know about the shooting in Sandy Hook? I’m a wanted man.”

