Alleged racist attack on SkyTrain in Vancouver prompts police investigation
Transit Police say they are investigating, after an alleged racist attack on the the SkyTrain on Monday night.
In a Facebook post, Noor Fadel, who wears a hijab, said the incident took place just before 10 pm, after she got on the Canada Line at Waterfront, bound for Richmond-Brighouse.
The moment she sat down on the train, she said, a man “got up and started to swear at me calling me a whore and a slut telling me he will kill me and all Muslims in a mix of Arabic and some other language I wasn’t understanding.”
Fadel writes that the man was not Muslim and after he raised his hand and began saying he was going to kill her, “I wanted to film him but I was afraid he was going to hit me.”
The man was using “horrific words,” says Fadel, and allegedly attempted to grab her head and “shove it in his crotch.”
While this in itself is disturbing, Fadel said, an equally disturbing factor was the fact no one stepped in to help right away.
“He hit me,” she writes. “And everyone watched as he did so.”
Everyone, that is, except for one man, says Fadel.
“One guy just like me, on his way home from work, got up and pushed the guy away and stayed in front of me until the man got off at Vancouver City Centre,” she wrote.
Fadel says the Good Samaritan then got off with her at Yaletown station “and stayed with me the entire time when police and paramedics arrived.”
Fadel writes that not only was she upset by the attack, but that it “saddens my heart that so many people watched as I was being attacked and assaulted simply because of a man who knew nothing of me but chose to judge me based on the hijab I wear.”
She implored others to “stay safe and please help one another.”
Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan told Daily Hive the incident is being investigated and said more information would be released Wednesday.
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