New York City police are looking for three men who allegedly taunted a young Muslim woman aboard a subway train in Manhattan, yelling about the current presidential election and calling her a terrorist.
Police say the incident occurred at 10 p.m. on Dec. 1 after the 18-year-old woman, Yasmin Seweid, was approached by three men in their early 20s approached her shouting “Donald Trump” at her. She said when she boarded a train, Gothamist reported, they followed her. She got on the 6 train on East 23rd Street and Park Ave. after leaving Baruch College.
Seweid said the men were drunk white men, according to CBS New York.
“They were surrounding me from behind and they were like, ‘Oh look, it’s an [expletive] terrorist,’” she said. “I didn’t answer. They pulled my strap of the bag and it ripped, and that’s when I turned around and I was really polite and I was like, ‘can you please leave me alone?’ and everyone was looking, no one said a thing, everyone just looked away.”
Police say the men told the woman “you don’t belong here,” referring to her hijab headscarf as a “rag.”
As the train pulled into Grand Central station, one of the suspects told her to take off her hijab and unsuccessfully attempted to pull it off.
“They kept saying, ‘you don’t belong here, get out of this country, go back to your country,’ and finally they came really close and they were like, ’take that rag off your head,'” she added.
The woman said she ran out of the train and then contacted police.
Police are investigating it as an anti-Muslim bias incident.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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