A Muslim legislator in Connecticut is calling for a hate crime investigation after she was brutally attacked outside an Eid-al Adha prayer service last month. She said that she felt her body go numb as the attacker held her in a chokehold and that she feels law enforcement minimized the incident.
Rep. Maryam Khan, 34, who became the first Muslim elected to Connecticut’s House of Representatives last year, said she was taking photos outside an annual Eid-al Adha prayer service at Hartford’s XL Center when a man approached her.
The man, whom police identified as Andrey Desmond, 30, allegedly made sexual advances toward Khan and her two daughters, who are 15 and 10. She said he slapped her, put her in a chokehold and slammed her against the ground.
“I tried to de-escalate. I tried to distract,” she said. “He just kept persisting.”
Khan said she yelled for help, but police said officers stationed at the event had already ended their shifts. After she made several attempts to free herself, civilian men intervened, and she was able to get to safety.
Desmond’s defense attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment. At his arraignment last month, she cited Desmond’s history of mental health issues, including a six-month stint at an inpatient psychiatric facility in New York.
He was originally charged with third-degree assault, unlawful restraint, breach of peace and interfering with police, but after a hearing this week, new charges were added and others were upgraded to felonies. Now he faces three counts of risk of injury to a child, second-degree assault, third-degree attempted sexual assault and first-degree strangulation, all felonies, as well as a misdemeanor count of interfering with an officer.
What’s notably missing, Khan said, is a hate crime investigation.
“You do need to investigate to see: Has this person had a bias towards Muslims?” she said. “The fact that there was none of that was very problematic to me.”
Police told NBC…
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