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| -Lurid Crime Tales- | |
| St. Louis police allege hate crime in latest attack on Bosnian resident | |
| 2014-12-09 | |
| The St. Louis police chief has asked for the FBI's help investigating what he believes was a hate crime attack against a woman in the same Bosnian neighborhood where a man was beaten to death days earlier by hammer-wielding teens, and where assaults have spiked dramatically in recent months. The 26-year-old Bosnian-American woman told police she was stopped in her car by three African-American teens early Friday morning in the city's Bevo Mill section, where tens of thousands of Bosnians settled following the civil war in the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago. The incident occurred just blocks from where Zemir Begic, a 32-year-old Bosnian-American, was beaten to death by teenagers with hammers a week earlier. One of the assailants flashed a gun and ordered the woman out of her vehicle and another hit the woman's windshield with what police believe was a crowbar, authorities said. "You're Bosnian," one of the suspects allegedly said. "I should just kill you now." The woman, who was pulled from the car and then beaten, was found unconscious by a passerby, police said. The alleged statement prompted St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson to present the case to the FBI.
"As of now, officers are investigating this incident as a bias crime based on the victim's account of the incident," the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said in an email Monday. "The investigation is ongoing." Authorities said they don't believe the attacks on Begic and the woman are related, but acknowledged a disturbing rise in violent crime in the area in recent months. Although police have not made a connection, the crime spike coincides with the rioting that followed the August police shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson, Mo. | |
| Posted by:DarthVader |
| #2 Couldn't oossibly be a hate crime. He was white! But a Muslim. Now we shall see if Islamophobia trumps Racism. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-12-09 08:22 |
| #1 Couldn't oossibly be a hate crime. He was white! |
| Posted by: chris 2014-12-09 08:15 |