A Brooklyn woman has been arrested on hate crimes charges over a disturbing viral video showing hot coffee and a phone thrown at a presidential campaign staffer wearing a Palestinian scarf while she was with her young son on a playground.
Hadasa Bozakkaravani, 48, was arrested Tuesday and charged with four counts of hate crimes, along with others for assault, battery on a person under 11, reckless endangerment, aggravated harassment and menacing, the NYPD said. .
Bozakkaravani’s arrest came nearly two weeks after a video of a vile attack at Fort Greene on Nov. 7 went viral, exactly one month after Hamas terrorists massacred Israelis.
It shows a woman confronting Ashish Prashar, 40, a London-born press secretary who worked for former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as well as President Biden’s successful 2020 and Barack Obama’s successful campaigns in 2008.
The Indian-American father said he was attacked for wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional black and white Arab scarf, while on the Edmonds Playground basketball court on Dekalb Avenue with his 18-month-old son.
The attacker was seen throwing coffee at the father who was with his young son at a Fort Greene playground.
“She told me several times that I didn’t belong here,” Prashar told CBS News, and claimed she also told him, “You’re a terrorist.”
“She viscerally threw her phone at our heads,” he said of the attack.
“I ducked and it didn’t reach both of us. At that moment I put my son on the floor behind my legs. When I looked up again, hot coffee was hitting my face,” Prashar said.
A Brooklyn woman has been arrested in connection with a viral hate crime attack.
It seemed provoked by Prashar’s son’s attempt to interact with his own son, he said.
“You and your son escape,” the woman with a cap and sunglasses shouted in the now viral video.
According to the father, if he had not quickly put his son on the ground and protected him with his legs during the confrontation, the 18-month-old child could have been burned by the aggressor’s very hot drink.
When a passerby intervened, the woman grabbed her own son and left.
Victim Ashish Prashar, 40, said the woman attacked him while he was holding his 18-month-old son in a playground. ABC7
Prashar said he suffered some scratches and bruises from the attacker’s blow to the face, but his son was unharmed.
“This is again after 9/11,” Prashar said. “As if every person of color is now a target. “We have been completely dehumanized by our president and our institutions.”
Prashar previously worked as Johnson’s press secretary during his tenure as mayor of London, and later for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative in Sierra Leone, according to his website.
After moving to the United States, he worked on Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 and Biden’s victory in the White House in 2020. Most recently, he worked as global marketing director for advertising agency R/GA, based In New York.
Prashar, who has been a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, said he received the Arab scarf as a gift from a Christian Palestinian more than a decade ago while working in the West Bank.
He credited the local community for being the “driving force” behind Bozakkaravani’s surrender to the NYPD.
“New Yorkers are the only reason he turned himself in, and for that I will be eternally grateful,” he wrote on X.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized the “despicable” attack on the father and son.
“These bigoted attacks must stop,” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of CAIR’s New York chapter.
Bozakkaravani pleaded not guilty to all nine charges against her and was released on her own recognizance, NBC News reported.
He is due back in court on January 24.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn