A man has been charged with hate crimes after allegedly attacking two Sikh men in Queens, New York and ripping off their turbans.
Authorities arrested 20-year-old Hezekiah Coleman at the scene on Tuesday, per NBC News, and charged him with two counts of robbery as a hate crime, along with robbery, assault as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment.
Police accused Coleman of attacking the two men, who are 64 and 76, around 7 a.m. at 95th Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard in Queens Richmond Hill neighborhood. The victims claimed two men approached them and struck them in the head with “closed fists and a wooden stick,” before tearing off their turbans and stealing money from them.
The attack occurred in the same intersection where Nirmal Singh, a 70-year-old Sikh man visiting New York City from India, was badly beaten while out for a walk last week.
“Sikhs have repeatedly faced this kind of violence—now multiple times in this same place in this month alone,” Nikki Singh, senior policy and advocacy manager at the Sikh Coalition, told NBC. “As an organization that works to combat and prevent hate, we continue to stand with the Sikh community in Queens, as well as all impacted New York City communities who routinely experience these hate crimes.”
The attack comes as civil rights organizations have fought to bring attention to violence against Sikh Americans. The latest attack in Queens also comes after four Sikh workers were murdered at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis last April. Police concluded that the shooting did not constitute a hate crime.
