Police are searching for a man accused of ripping a headscarf off a Muslim teenager while yelling “terrorist” at a mall in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Authorities are calling the incident an assault and have vowed to conduct a “thorough investigation.”
The incident occurred at around 9:40pm local time on Tuesday, when the 14-year-old was walking with a group in the parking lot of Perimeter Mall in Dunwoody, Georgia.
A man approached the girl and ripped the hijab off her head while yelling “terrorist,”according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). He then ran off with the headscarf.
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“He kept tugging and tugging, and she realized he was tugging on her hijab,” the girl’s mother told local NBC affiliate WXIA-TV. She added that her daughter thought the man appeared to be drunk, but “wasn’t sure.”
Police are calling the incident an assault, and Dunwoody police chief Billy Grogan says a “thorough investigation” will be conducted.
Authorities are currently combing through mall surveillance footage to find a decent image of the man, who has so far only been described as an older white male, according to WAGA-TV.
The Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has dubbed the attack “despicable” and “the latest in a wave of anti-Muslim hate crimes across the nation,” according to a statement by CAIR-Georgia’s executive director Edward Ahmed Mitchell.
The organization is offering a $ 1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man, who is wanted on charges of simple assault and theft.
CAIR-Georgia said the girl’s family is shaken up by the attack, but will not press charges if the man comes forward and apologizes.
Just last month, CAIR-Georgia urged mosques in the Atlanta area to increase security, after death threats were received by mosques in the city, as well as the suburbs of Lawrenceville and Norcross.
