Rachel Huggins

USA TODAY

Mark Carson was gunned down in Greenwich Village

Suspect allegedly made homophobic remarks before shooting

Anti-gay bias attacks increasing%2C police commissioner says

NEW YORK — A gunman who police say used homophobic slurs before firing a fatal shot point-blank into a man's face on a crowded Manhattan street appeared in court on Sunday to face a charge of murder as a hate crime.

"It was a quickie. He shot him and he went straight to the ground," a bouncer at a nearby club told the New York Post. "Half his body was lying on the sidewalk and half was on the street."

Elliot Morales, who appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court, was charged with murder and weapons charges, The Wall Street Journal reported. Morales was ordered held without bail pending another court appearance on Thursday. His attorney, Reginald Sharpe, could not be reached for comment.

Authorities said Morales used a silver revolver to kill 32-year-old Mark Carson as he walked with a companion in in lower Manhattan early Saturday morning. Morales, 33, trailed and taunted the men, yelling antigay slurs and asking one of them, "You want to die tonight?," according to the New York Times.

Police found Carson fatally wounded on the pavement. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Beth Israel Hospital. Morales, who was arrested in 1998 for attempted murder, was caught a few streets down by an officer who heard a description on his radio and spotted him, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

In Greenwich Village, a neighborhood long known as a bedrock of the gay rights movement, Kelly called the killing a hate crime. "There were no words that would aggravate the situation, and the victim did not know the perpetrator," he said.

About 15 minutes before the bloodshed, Kelly said the gunman was seen urinating outside an upscale restaurant a few blocks from the Stonewall Inn, the site of 1969 riots that helped give rise to the modern gay-rights movement when patrons at a gay bar reacted to police harassment.

Saturday's shooting is at least the fourth violent attack in two weeks believed to be motivated by anti-gay bias, police told CNN.

According to Kelly, there have been 22 bias-motivated events this year, up "significantly" from 13 this time last year, he added.

The shooting stunned a city where, in many neighborhoods, same-sex couples walk freely holding hands.

Contributing: Associated Press