Hate crime charges were announced yesterday (March 7) for a December 2021 disturbance. The incident involved two neighbors, where one was repeatedly run over by a car in California.
Surveillance video captured the terrifying moments when 45-year-old Cory Brown, a Black man, was run over six times with a car. Police have identified 45-year-old Aqweel Khan of Fremont as the suspect. Authorities say the harrowing situation happened at the Laguna Commons Apartments on Fremont Boulevard. One of Brown’s neighbors, a woman named Theresa, witnessed the commotion and tried to intervene. “I went down in the parking lot and the man in the white car proceeded to run him over again and I said, ‘Stop, you’re going to kill him!’ And that’s when he took off out of the parking lot,” she told NBC Bay Area.
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price said, “We are here to right a great wrong. Fremont police were very adamant that we look at this case and ensure it was properly charged.” Khan has been in custody at the Alameda County Santa Rita Jail since he allegedly mowed his neighbor over with the vehicle. Before the addition of the hate crime, his charges included attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. Surprisingly, this isn’t Khan’s first run-in with the law following accusations of racist behavior.
Upon taking a deeper look into Brown’s case, investigators discovered the disgruntled neighbor also vandalized Brown’s car with racial slurs, made racist threats and attempted to physically assault him. “There was clear evidence of racial animus by Mr. Khan targeted towards Mr. Brown,” Price revealed. But the suspect’s hatred isn’t limited to Black people. In August 2021, Khan allegedly beat a woman of Indian descent for speaking Hindi, then punched her in the face until she lost consciousness and threw her phone into a lake. With Khan’s pattern of violent behavior, Theresa is just happy Brown is alive: “Thank God he’s OK. It was very traumatic for me to watch that.”