Woman Charged With Hate Crime in Pepper-Spraying of Muslim Uber Driver
The New York Times
Prosecutors said the woman, Jennifer Guilbeault, attacked Shohel Mahmud without provocation after he began to pray in Arabic while stopped at a traffic light. She has pleaded not guilty.
Shohel Mahmud had no obvious reason to worry when he picked up two young women who had ordered an Uber around midnight on July 31.
After they got into his car on the West Side of Manhattan, he confirmed that one of them was Jennifer Guilbeault, the person who had ordered the ride, and then drove off toward the two East Side stops the women had chosen.
The ride was unremarkable as the car traveled uptown and across Central Park, Mr. Mahmud said. The women chatted and looked at their phones. They and Mr. Mahmud did not speak, he said. “They were talking and chilling,” he said on Monday. “Why would I interrupt?”
The mood changed when he stopped at a traffic light at 65th Street and Lexington Avenue, he and prosecutors said. After he began to pray quietly in Arabic while waiting for the light to turn green, Ms. Guilbeault lunged at him, grabbed him and doused his face with pepper spray.
Moments later, when Ms. Guilbeault was standing outside the car, her friend asked why she had done what she did. “He’s brown,” Ms. Guilbeault replied, according to a police officer’s statement in a court document that cites surveillance footage.
On Monday, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said that Ms. Guilbeault, 23, had been indicted on several counts, including second- and third-degree assault as a hate crime. Conviction on second-degree assault as a hate crime could yield a prison sentence of up to 15 years, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg said.
