A national civil rights group is calling on the FBI to investigate an Election Night assault on a New York Muslim by a gang allegedly infuriated that Sen. Barack Obama was elected.
Four white men allegedly attacked 17-year-old Ali Kamara, a Black Muslim, as he was walking to his Staten Island home the night Obama was elected.
Kamara told police his assailants jumped out of a car and jumped him at about 10 p.m., The Staten Island Advance reported.
"I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama!' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating," Kamara told the Daily News.
Kamara was able to escape by hopping a neighbor’s fence, according to The Advance.
"I was bleeding all over. I did not know them," Kamara told the Daily News. "I think it was a racist crime."
Janeba Ladepo, the boy’s mother, told the Daily News her son called her at work in hysterics, saying he was bleeding and “I’m dying.”
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"My son does not deserve to get hit like this. For someone to say Obama and hit him, it sounds racist," Ladepo told the paper.
Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force was investigating the assault. Meanwhile, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is asking the federal government to do the same.
The Kamaras moved to the United States from Liberia eight years ago, according to media reports.
