Author:
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: October 11, 2001
URL: http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1583004418
SAN DIEGO: San Diego police are
currently searching for two men who stabbed Swaran Kaur Bhullar on Sunday
afternoon while sitting in her car waiting for the stop light to change
at the intersection of Miramar Road and Cabot Drive.
The men, who were riding on a motorcycle,
pulled up beside her, yanked open her door, and were said to have shouted,
"This is what you get for what you've done to us," before slashing at her
with a knife.
Bringing her arms up and hunching
over to protect herself, Bhullar was stabbed twice in the head. When they
heard a car approaching, the two men immediately sped off. She was later
treated at Sharp Memorial Hospital in Kearny Mesa for two cuts in her scalp
and released.
The attack on Bhullar, a 51-year-old
resident of coastal North County, is possibly the first incident of a suspected
hate crime involving violence reported in the San Diego area since the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "and we're treating it as a hate crime at this
point," San Diego police media relations officer Dave Cohen told India-West.
According to Cohen, San Diego police
are already investigating 36 suspected hate crimes, which include threatening
phone calls, nasty notes left on windshields, graffiti and vandalism.
At the time of the incident, Bhullar
was on her way to the family's Bombay Videos store. "If that car hadn't
driven up, I might have died," Bhullar told the San Diego Union Tribune.
"They could have cut me and left me there, and there's nothing I could
have done."
Bhullar, a naturalized citizen from
Kenya, came to San Diego 15 years ago because she believed this country
was safer than Africa. "I just want to be in my own home, safe," she said.
"and I want to remind Sikhs and anyone who is brown to keep their car doors
locked."
(IANS)
