Canada: Man arrested after driving car at worshipers at 2 Toronto mosques
By Barry Ellsworth
TRENTON, Canada (AA): A man who drove his car at worshipers at two Toronto mosques in Canada has been arrested after an “anti-Muslim, hate motivation investigation,” it was reported Thursday.
Toronto police said officers received calls from two Scarborough mosques — one in the Lawrence Avenue East and Markham Road area, the other in the Lawrence Avenue East and Midland Avenue area.
Police said they were called to services at a Toronto mosque after a man allegedly drove his car into the parking lot and attempted to strike worshipers as well as other vehicles.
The driver then sped away and when to another mosque and repeated the same actions. The incidents occurred on April 5 around 5:30 am and 6 am, police said.
The suspect next drove to a nearby shopping mall, where he entered and accosted several shoppers in a threatening way and shouted anti-Islamic comments.
A 28-year-old man was arrested and charged with two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, five counts of criminal harassment, uttering threats of bodily harm, assault, and indecent acts in a public place and insulting others.
Police also ended up charging the suspect with another incident on April 7 at a mosque in the nearby city of Markham.
In a separate incident in the city of Kitchener about 100 km west of Toronto, police charged a 27-year-old woman after an alleged hate-motivated attack that occurred as people waited in line at a driving test center on Wednesday.
Mifrah Abid, the co-ordinator of the Together Against Islamophobia program for the Coalition of Muslim Women in the area, posted a video on Twitter in which she confronted a woman.
She accused the woman of “making a racist comment about brown women.” The woman denied the accusation, then lunged forward and seized Abid’s phone and threw it at her.
A second video taken by another person showed the altercation.
Police charged the suspect with assault, assault with a weapon and theft under $CAN5,000 ($US3,700).
[Photo: People gather outside Baitul Aman Masjid to protest against earlier violent attack in Scarborough district of Toronto, Canada on May 12, 2023. 67-year-old man was violently attacked by two men in the parking lot of Baitul Aman Masjid on Wednesday in Toronto. Photojournalist :Mert Alper Dervis/AA]
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