Yet Another Hate Crime in US Mistakes Indians for Arabs

The attacker told law enforcement that he wanted to “run the Arabs out of our country” with the dumpster fire.

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The latest in a recent string of incidents in the United States that have targeted South Asians mistaken for Arabs, a Florida man has been arrested for setting fire to a dumpster in front of a convenience store that is owned by Indians.

Sixty-four-year-old Richard Leslie Lloyd told deputies that he wanted to “run the Arabs out of our country,” and so on Friday morning, he took to rolling a dumpster in front of the store in Port St. Lucie, lighting it on fire and tearing down signs posted outside the store.

“When the deputies arrived, they noticed the dumpster had been rolled in front of the doors and the contents were lit on fire,” St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said in a statement posted on Facebook. “Upon seeing our deputies, the man put his hands behind his back and said ‘take me away.’”

Lloyd was arrested that day and is being held in the the St. Lucie County Jail in lieu of a US$30,000 bond. While his mental health is evaluated, the state attorney’s office will determine whether the incident was a hate crime.

“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Lloyd made the assumption that the store owners were Arabic when, in fact, they are of Indian descent,” Mascara said. “Regardless, we will not tolerate violence based on age, race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, homeless status, mental or physical disability.”

The incident comes after a 39-year-old Sikh man narrowly escaped death last week after he was shot in a suspected hate crime in Washington Friday, just nine days after Kansas-based Indian immigrant Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, tragically lost his life in a similar incident.

The Sikh man was working on his vehicle in his driveway in Kent’s East Hill neighborhood at about 8:00 p.m. local time, when an unidentified, white male approached him. Following a squabble, the perpetrator shot him in the arm, shouting, "Go back to your own country.”

In addition to these hate crimes, another white man across the country has been charged with assault and intimidation after he attacked an employee at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Salem, Oregon, with a pipe Tuesday afternoon, police said.

Jason Lee Kendall went into the restaurant Al Aqsa Tuesday afternoon and hit an employee in the head with a pipe after yelling, "Get out of America.” He had targeted the employee after he said he saw a "Saddam Hussein looking guy" holding a woman captive as his slave. His proof was the shirt the woman had been wearing.

According to the affidavit of the incident, the officer who came on scene could feel a small bump on the employee's head.