Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Possible Hate Crime in Vancouver Being Investigated

The story on the CBC website also contains stills from the video of the attack.


'Extraordinarily violent' attack dubbed hate crime



Vancouver police are calling it a possible hate crime.

On Aug. 4, a downtown Vancouver security guard was robbed and viciously beaten in a "shocking, unprovoked attack" while working the night shift at a residential building in Yaletown.

"There certainly hasn't been an assault of this level of violence in recent weeks or months," police spokeswoman Const. Jana McGuinness said Saturday. "This was an extraordinarily violent incident."

The guard - a 26-year-old man from Surrey of South Asian descent - was in the lobby of the building in the 500-block Pacific Boulevard at about 4: 30 a.m., McGuinness said.

The guard left his post to tell a group of people standing near the back entrance of the lobby to either leave the building or come inside.

A man in his 30s - described as six feet tall with a light complexion, muscular and sharply dressed - followed the guard as he walked back to his post.

The man then grabbed the guard, pulled him forward and spent "several minutes" knee-striking him in the face and all over his body. He also repeatedly punched the guard in the head and face and stole the guard's cellphone and wallet.

"The video tells a really disturbing story . . . this is a significant violent assault," McGuinness said of the surveillance tape documenting the attack obtained by police.

Two people who walked into the lobby during the attack called 911.

The guard was then taken to a Vancouver-area hospital where he was treated for severe facial wounds and chipped teeth. He was released several hours later.

"This guard endured a very serious beating. It's really remarkable he wasn't more significantly injured," McGuinness said.

The assault could have been a hate crime due to several comments made during the minutes-long attack, she said.

The police department's robbery unit and hate crimes unit are still searching for the suspect.

Anyone with information about the identity of the man is asked to call Vancouver police at 604-717-2541 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

nscallan@theprovince.com
twitter.com/niamhsays

1 comment:

Stephen Henry said...

Thanks for posting this. A lot of Hate Crimes in Canada go rather unnoticed in the Media. The Right Wing Media even practically denies that there is such a category as a Hate Crime. They rant, rave and howl over every little incident involving a Hijab or a Burqua but violent Hate Crimes like the one that you described go unannounced. I hope that the perpetrator of this crime gets caught and punished soon.