Skip to footer

FBI investigates attack on Muslim woman by Indiana college student

The FBI has opened a hate crime investigation into an attack on a Muslim woman by Indiana University student. 

|
(Bloomington Police Department via AP)
19-year-old Triceten D. Bickford, an Indiana University student faces multiple felony charges including intimidation, strangulation and battery in the Saturday, Oct. 17, 2015, attack on a Muslim woman in a cafe in Bloomington, Ind.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| Bloomington, Ind.

The FBI has opened a hate crime investigation into an attack on a Muslim woman in which police say a 19-year-old college student shouted racial slurs and tried to remove her headscarf.

FBI Special Agent Wendy Osborne tells The Herald-Times there is no deadline for concluding the investigation into Saturday's incident in Bloomington, Indiana.

Bloomington police say Triceten Bickford of Fort Wayne, Indiana, assaulted the 47-year-old woman outside a Turkish cafe.

Witnesses say Bickford shouted "white power," ''kill the police" and an anti-black racial slur. He's also accused of trying to remove her headscarf and restricting her breathing.

Indiana University expelled Bickford following reports of the attack.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: 

After living in the US for 18 years, the woman said she has “never experienced any kind of discrimination or racism, let alone an all-out attack,” WTHR News reports. But the incident comes at a time of heightened racism against Muslims in the US. 

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a growing anti-Muslim sentiment in our society,” Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told The Christian Science Monitor Tuesday.

“I can say I’ve been working at this organization for over three years, and the number of instances, and the general atmosphere in the country, it’s more than I’ve ever seen,” Madihha Ahussain, staff attorney with Muslim Advocates in Oakland, Calif., tells The Christian Science Monitor. “And a lot of people who’ve done this a long time – there’s talk about how it seems even worse than after 9/11.”

Bickford is scheduled to appear in court Friday on felony charges of strangulation, intimidation, battery on a police officer, and misdemeanor charges.

What's a hate crime? Here's how the FBI defines it:

.

For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties

The FBI reports that there were more than 5,000 hate crimes reported in 2013. Of that total, 135 were anti-Islamic. Among religious hate crimes, the biggest total was anti-Jewish, with 625.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to FBI investigates attack on Muslim woman by Indiana college student
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/1022/FBI-investigates-attack-on-Muslim-woman-by-Indiana-college-student
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe