Yemeni convenience store owner suffers brutal metal pipe attack in possible hate crime
Police are looking for four men who brutally attacked a Brooklyn bodega owner in an incident that police are now investigating as a possible hate crime, ABC7 reported.
Jamal Sawaid, who is an immigrant from Yemen, was working behind the counter at his grocery store on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island when he was attacked. In security video of the incident, one of the assailants can be seen jumping on the counter, grabbing Sawaid, and beating him with what looks to be a metal pipe. Another man can be seen attacking one of Sawaid's employees.
"He hit me with a stick. More than one, more than three, more than four, more than five," Sawaid said. "I never see them before. I don't have no problem with nobody. No problem with anyone in the community."
He says the men were yelling anti-Arab slurs.
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"I have to find out what's the problem," he said. "Why they come to my place and they just struck my head? And they hit me only in the head, in my head, in my head. They want to kill me. For what reason?"
Security video captured four men fleeing the scene and jumping into a white pickup truck.
“This terrible incident is further proof of how urgently we need our elected officials to take action, and pass laws that will deliver real protection for bodega owners and other small businesses who are continuously subjected to threats and violence every single day,” Dr. Debbie Almonstaser, from the Yemeni American Merchants Association, said in a statement. “We call on local and state elected officials to pass legislation to protect our merchants and help put an end to these horrible attacks that continue to plague our community.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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