A bodega owner was brutally beaten with a metal pipe in a suspected anti-Arab hate crime in Brooklyn over the weekend, police said on Tuesday (April 18).
According to the New York Police Department, Jamal Sawaid, 58, was approached by four men as they violently attacked him while projecting racist slurs inside Mermaid Avenue Deli and Grill in Coney Island around 2:20 p.m on Saturday (April 15). One of the men used a metal pipe, as the rest of the group battered the victim’s face and head before fleeing in a white pickup truck. Video surveillance released by the NYPD on Tuesday shows all four suspects running down a sidewalk.
The victim was transported in stable condition to NYU Langone Hospital, authorities said. Sawaid, an immigrant from Yemen who’s owned the store for over 20 years, told WABC that he didn’t know the men and thought they were going to kill him that day. “He hit me with a stick. More than one, more than three, more than four, more than five,” Sawaid told the TV station. “I never see them before. I don’t have no problem with nobody. No problem with anyone in the community.”
“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,” Yemeni American Merchants Association Board Secretary Dr. Debbie Almontaser 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.”
No arrests have been made as the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is still investigating the unprovoked incident.