Roanoke, Va., Businesses Offer Bullied Gay Student Free Car Repairs

Business owners in Roanoke, Va., have come together to lend a helping hand to a gay bullied college student, Virginia's WDBJ7 reported.

Jordan Addison's car had been vandalized four times between March and May. The vandals spray-painted anti-gay slurs on Addison's car because he is gay and someone even keyed the word "dyke" into the side of the Radford University student's car.

Despite Addison's best efforts, he could not remove the homophobic epithets from his vehicle and the lowest estimate he received to clean the car was $2,500 -- a price he could not afford.

When Richard Henegar, the manager of Quality Auto Paint and Body, heard what happened to the young man he insisted that he help out.

"Once I saw the vandalism that was done to it, I said 'that's uncalled for. We're gonna fix your car.' That's the least we can do," he said.

The auto body shop went far beyond just painting the car. Not only did they remove the hateful graffiti, but also added an extra $10,000 worth of extras to Addison's car. Other companies also pitched in to fix the student's car and workers spent more than 100 hours on the automobile.

Addison was practically speechless when he saw his car, which now has tinted windows, a new security system and a new stereo.

"It looks great," Addison said. "It hasn't looked that great the entire time I've had it."

Henegar said he was happy that Addison loved his new ride.

"We can't afford to do this ourselves," he said, "We might have all the good intentions in the world but I can't finance something like this ourselves."