A teen from Lafayette is trying to put a horrific crime behind him while recovering from an experience that nearly killed him. On June 20 of last year, Holden White was brutally tortured until his attacker presumed his was dead. White, an openly gay young man is trying to get the suspect indicted on hate crime charges.
Seven months has passed since the meetup happened, initiating on a dating app called Grindr. The met up turned into something that White would leave him scarred for the rest of his life. He wants to share his story of what happened to prevent this from happening to someone else.
* Warning, some of this may be hard to read…. *
“Everything seemed fine. Nothing seemed weird, and we decided after a month of talking we should, like, meet,” White recalled. He stated that he saw no red flags as he was 18, and Chance Seneca, age 19, agreed to a first date, but once White was picked up and playing video games in Seneca’s bedroom, things started to immediately change.
“He left the room to get something, and then came back. And when he came back, he had come up behind me and that is when he wrapped a cord around my throat,” White recalled.
White struggled to breathe as nearly everyone of his blood vessels in in face ruptured. His vision when blurred as well as his memory.
“The next thing I remember I was in the bathtub, and he was slicing open my left wrist,” White recalled.
He was naked and surrounded his own blood as he faded in and out of consciousness while his attacker watched him. In his mind, he just knew it was the end.
“I was saying my final words to myself which were just, ‘Stay Calm,” White said.
White then fell into a coma for a period of three days. It ended he began to see a light. He went toward the light and that is when he woke up in the hospital with a breathing tube down his throat and bandages covering up nearly his entire body.
Two days after White woke up, He remember the Lafayette Police Department question him as to what happened to him. He later learned that Chance Seneca phoned police and admitted that he just killed a man.
There was no rape kit administered because Holden was struggling for his life. He had been stabbed six times in the neck. He had a blow to the back of his head and cuts so deep in wrists that both his hands were nearly sawed off. White was feeling he deserved more answers from police as to what really happened to him. They instructed hum that he will not receive any additional details until he attends court.
White spent nearly an entire month in the hospital, but he was determined to recover to full health.
“You can’t let other people control your story because it’s your story,” White told news reporters.
Three weeks after White was released from the hospital, he attempted to return back to work but was told to leave due to the result of his hands.
It was not until nearly 7 months after the attack, White was able to regain back full function to his right hand. His left hand unfortunately is still partially numb. Just last week, he started a new role since the attack happened.
White has made it a mission to move on from the brutal attack on his life and make to make sure that the man responsible for this can’t attack another gay man like himself.
“My one goal that I would say would be to yes keep him in prison, and then number two, to let everyone know if you have a traumatic experience happen to you, it’s okay to be sad about it but you need to not stay sad the whole time. You have to move on.”
Holden is moving on from this attach by continuing to date on Grind, but only meeting up in public places. To keep Chance Seneca behind bars, he has to be charged with a hate crime. White says the Federal Bureau of Investigations is currently assigned to his case. Seneca doesn’t appear in court for his pre-trail until March 3rd.
Holden was asked what makes him so confident that the hate crime charge will hold up in court?
White stated, “He chose to go on the app Grindr. He went on an app designated for gay people. He chose to choose someone who is gay and very proud of sexuality. He said this in prison. He said he chose me because I have a smaller stature and it would be easier to kill me. He knew what he was doing. This was preplanned, and when you look at his Facebook, his profile picture is Jeffrey Dahmer, and if you know the previous history about Jeffrey Dahmer, then you can clearly understand all the reasoning on whey he wanted to do what he did. So, this is a hate crime to me. It will always be a hate crime to me.”
