An attempt to burn an east Charlotte store that included a note warning of plans to “torture” immigrants is being investigated as a hate crime by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police.
Police say officers were called at 9:59 p.m. Thursday to a fire at the Central Market, a Nepali Indian store at 5718 Albemarle Road in Charlotte. On arrival, officers were advised by the Charlotte Fire Department that the fire was contained to the front door and burned itself out by their arrival.
Investigators say one of the windows in the door had been broken out with a rock and a note was left near the door. The note stated “the suspect did not want any refugee business owners and that they would torture the owner if they did not leave and go back to where they came from,” according to police.
“If you don’t follow this warning then we are not responsible for the torture starting now,” said part of the note featured on WSOC.
It was signed “White America.”
There were no injuries in the fire, officials said.
Investigators say video surveillance of the incident showed a black male suspect, about 5-feet, 8-inches tall, 200 pounds. He had a short afro and a goatee, and was wearing a gray hoodie under a black coat, light jeans and black shoes, police said.
Central Market is a Nepali Indian store that sells fast food, groceries and gifts, mostly from the Indian subcontinent (Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Bhutan). People from India make up Charlotte’s second largest concentration of immigrants (just below Hispanics) with 12,300 people. The number jumps to over 14,000 when including immigrants form neighboring nations.
A large number of the H-1B Visa workers employed by Charlotte’s banks and other corporations are also highly skilled people from India.
The arson case comes at a time when the nation’s population of people from the Indian subcontinent are on alert, after a several high profile killings, including one in Lancaster County last month. The victim in that attack, Harnish Patel, 43, was the owner of a convenience store in Lancaster County. He was found dead of gunshot wounds in the yard of his home on March 2.
The Times of India covered Patel’s killing and noted it happened just days after an Indian engineer was killed in Kansas by a man who allegedly yelled “get out of my country” before shooting Srinivas Kunchubhotla, age 32. Two others were injured in that attack.
Here in Charlotte, a woman from Pakistan reported in mid March that a man pulled a gun on her as she sat breast feeding her baby in a parked car in the University City area. The woman, who is a married mother of four, said she clutched her baby and fled through the parking lot to an Indian store for help, and the man sped off. The incident was called “ethnic intimidation” by the Council on American-Islamic Relations based in Washington, D.C.
Charlotte police are asking anyone with additional information concerning this case or the suspect to call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600. To learn more about the Crime Stoppers mobile app, please visit http://ift.tt/1hgHXym. For additional information about this incident please refer to CMPD report number 20170406-2159-07.
This is an ongoing, active investigation by both the police and the Charlotte Fire Investigation Task Force
Read Full Original Content Arsonist's threat to 'torture' Indian immigrants a hate crime, say Charlotte police - Charlotte Observer : http://ift.tt/2oNpTHI
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Arsonist's threat to 'torture' Indian immigrants a hate crime, say Charlotte police - Charlotte Observer"
Post a Comment