St. Louis Police Call Latest Bosnian Attack ‘Hate Crime,’ Request FBI Involvement

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson has asked requested the FBI get involved in what he says was a “hate crime” attack against a Bosnian woman in the same neighborhood where Zemir Begic, 32, was beaten to death just days earlier. Young black assailants allegedly hurling racial slurs beat Begic with a hammer, sparking protests in the tightly-knit Bosnian community.

In the most recent case, a 26-year-old Bosnian-American woman told police she was stopped in her car — just as Begic — by three African-American teens early Friday morning in the city’s Bevo Mill section, where tens of thousands of Bosnians migrated the in aftermath of the civil war in former Yugoslavia some 20 years ago. The attack took place only blocks from where Begic was beaten to death by hammer-wielding teenagers a week earlier.

However, this time, officials say one of the assailants waved a gun and ordered the woman out of her vehicle, while another hit the woman’s windshield with what police believed to be a crowbar.

“You’re Bosnian,” one of the suspects is alleged to have said. “I should just kill you now.”

The woman, who was subsequently pulled from the car and then beaten, was found unconscious by a citizen who “fortunately just so happened to be passing by,” police said. The alleged statement prompted Police Chief Dotson to present the case to the FBI.

“As of now, officers are investigating this incident as a bias crime based on the victim’s account of the incident,” the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said in an email. “The investigation is ongoing.”

Still, despite claims from the Bosnian community and various witnesses, including one caught on video, authorities said they don’t believe the attacks on Begic and the woman are related. However, they did acknowledge a disturbing rise in violent crime in the area in since the grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for shooting 18 -year-old black teenager Michael Brown in self-defense.

Although police have yet to officially make a connection, they even admit the racically-motivated crime spike coincides with the rioting that followed the shooting of Michael Brown. For residents in the Bosnian community, the racial motivation is obvious, as PPD previously reported. Yet, Fox News reported a telling conversation with another member of the community:

Bevo Mill residents, whose neighborhood has seen a cumulative 24-percent rise in aggravated assaults over the last three months, say assaults and threats by packs of teenagers against Bosnians have become the norm. One who spoke to FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity due to safety reasons claims he and his family experienced a similar attack and said there is a disturbing pattern of violence against white residents in the area.

“It is common for African-American teens to walk in the middle of the street and block in cars at intersections,” said the man, who has lived in the neighborhood for half a decade. “We have been stopped at intersections in Bevo and our car attacked by teens who pound on the car — laughing at us.”

“They only do this to white individuals, who they have learned will generally not respond. There is a pattern here and it is racially motivated,” he alleged. “Many of us are arming ourselves in order to avoid becoming the next victim to be beaten to death in the streets.”

“Overall the whole neighborhood is on alert,” Alderman Carol Howard told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There’s been an uptick in crime since August. I really do believe it has set off a sense of lawlessness.”

And it is that lawlessness exactly that prompted Bosnian protestors to take to the streets requesting increased policing in the community, unlike the Ferguson protestors backing Brown that seek less police interference in their high-crime neighborhoods.

After a request to do so came in from Chief Dotson, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay began crafting a plan to put 160 additional officers on the street in response to the recent increase in crime. Slay’s office, referring to crime statistics published on the St. Louis Police Department website, said aggravated assault was up 19.6 percent in the Bevo Mill neighborhood in the month of September juxtaposed to September of 2013.

That violence has been increasing since the August shooting of Michael Brown, but accelerated in the wake of the grand jury decision even further. In October 2014, aggravated assault was up by a greater 24.1 percent. In the month of November, it was up an increased 29 percent year-over-year.