From New York Daily News
A crew of hate-filled teenage girls attacked a Muslim woman at a Brooklyn Panera Bread, calling her a terrorist as they punched and spit at her, police said Friday.
Muslim community activist Souad Kirama was having coffee with a colleague inside the Panera Bread on Adams St. near Willoughby St. in Downtown Brooklyn when the girls began roughhousing with each other about 5:15 p.m. Tuesday.
“All I did was ask them to be quiet and they started attacking me and punching me in my back,” Kirama said between sobs on a Facebook live video after the attack. “People were just standing there watching me being beaten up and being called a ‘f—ing terrorist.’”
“They were just having their coffee like nothing was happening,” she said of the onlookers.
The NYPD is investigating the incident as a hate crime.
“I made sure to report it as a hate crime,” Kirama, 51, said. “We cannot accept this.”
A worker at the Panera Bread said on the video that he had never seen the girls before, and the attack was “pretty quick.”
“Never in my life have I seen this kind of violence and aggressiveness,” Kirama said.
