A Muslim man claims he and his hijab-wearing wife were harassed at a Brooklyn TJ Maxx by a woman screaming, “Go back to your country!”
Mido Mourad says the incident unfolded at the checkout line at the Bay Ridge store on 86th Street on Saturday. He and his wife were there buying winter clothes for their twins.
“After we grabbed our items, we stood near the register to decide if we were ready to check out. At this point, the white lady in the video, started cursing at my wife and I. My wife wears a hijab,” Mourad said in a statement shared by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“This lady became more and more aggressive and we started to worry that she was going to harm us. As we started to walk away, she yelled at us to ‘GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY!’ We were shocked and shaken.”
Mourad said TJ Maxx employees and a manager did nothing to intervene but that he called police on the advice of a witness.
Outside, he filmed the woman coming out of the store.
“While I was recording, she became angry and hit me and almost broke my cell phone,” Mourad claimed.
The recording shows the woman flipping the middle finger and yelling, “Stop taking pictures!” as she swipes at his phone.
“Get out of my face or I’m going to f– you up,” she says as she walks away with a friend.
When police arrived, Mourad claimed they told him the incident wasn’t a hate crime “but only a violation.” He said he filed a harassment complaint with the NYPD — but is urging them to probe it as a hate crime.
In a post to his personal Facebook, Mourad described the alleged attacker as a “crazy Trump supporter” but offered no evidence as to the woman’s political affiliation.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force has been notified and a police report has been filed, according to a spokesman.
A rep for TJ Maxx told the site that it’s also investigating, and will take “any internal actions we deem appropriate” to avoid future incidents.
“We are committed to fostering an environment in our stores in which everyone is treated with dignity and respect, and do not condone any disruptive or otherwise aggressive behavior,” said the spokesperson. “We are sorry to learn that this situation occurred between two customers and are looking into this matter further.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Cassady
