Christopher MathiasNew York Reporter, The Huffington Post
A man allegedly spat at a group of Muslim female college students last week while aboard a New Jersey train, and addressed them with racial and gendered slurs. The women said no one on the train came to their defense.
Patrick Pietropaolo, 62, of Newark, was arrested for the attack on Thursday, a New Jersey Transit Police spokeswoman said. He was charged with simple assault, bias intimidation, theft of service (for not paying the train fare) and resisting arrest. He was taken to the Essex County Jail, where bail was set at $15,000.
Three Muslim students — 21-year-old Yasmeen Alsaker, 21-year-old Sara Ebrahim and 25-year-old Tania Khaliq — were all wearing hijabs while riding the Newark Light Rail when they say the incident occurred. They say Pietropaolo shouted several obscene slurs at them, a number of which appear below.
“Funny story happened today,” Alsaker wrote Thursday in a Facebook post. “I finished school and took the lightrail to get to [Newark] penn station with my two Muslim hijaby friends. We sat down, a man was sitting behind us. He started cursing us out. My friend turned around to see whats going on, and then turned back. The man stood up and said: why are you staring at me ha? Why are you staring at me you F***ing muslim B**ch, and then he spit on her.”
She added that “no one in the light rail said anything.”
Pietropaolo allegedly called Ebrahim a “fucking Muslim bitch.” She recalled that he also used the words “motherfucker” and “cunt.”
“I didn’t stop staring at him,” she said. “We thought he was going to really going to attack us.”
Alsaker and Khaliq pushed Ebrahim to the front of the train, she said, and they opened the door to the train’s operator so they could alert him to Pietrpaolo’s behavior. However, the train operator closed the door on them, the women said. Ebrahim said she later realized it’s probably illegal to open that door.
“I was in a bad state,” Ebrahim said. “I was crying.”
The operator called for assistance from the New Jersey Transit Police Department, according to the police spokeswoman. When the train arrived at Newark Penn Station, Pietropaolo “exited the Light Rail Vehicle, and the New Jersey Transit Police Department gave chase on foot for a short distance” until he was apprehended.
“They really were treating us so good,” Ebrahim said of the officers, who took the women to the police station to file a report. “They calmed us down.”
Ebrahim said police told the women that cameras on the light rail probably captured audio from the incident. She said they also her Pietropaolo was likely “mentally unstable.” However, Ebrahim said she believes he meant what he said on the train.
Pietropaolo’s arrest comes amidst a surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Muslim hate crimes across the country.
He couldn’t be reached for comment on this story. It is unclear if he has a lawyer.
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