DETROIT — A Detroit woman says she was surrounded by a mob of men and subjected to racial slurs following a crash at Southfield Service Road and Paul on September 12, and her attorneys are calling for hate crime charges.
Susan Glass-Smith and her attorneys held a press conference Tuesday evening to share her account of the incident.
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"And someone ran a red light and ran into me," Glass-Smith said.
Detroit Police say an 18-year-old Arab American driver ran the red light at the intersection.
Glass-Smith says Arab American men then helped the woman who struck her car and that the other driver fled the scene.
"It just disappeared, she disappeared, the car disappeared," Glass-Smith said.
Glass-Smith says her car was then surrounded.
"It was surrounded by 20-30 men. They opened all of my car doors," Glass-Smith said.
As she waited for police, a man came to help as the situation escalated.
"They had a bat, they were swinging this bat and they said get out of here," Glass-Smith said.
Glass-Smith says that was followed by multiple racial slurs.
Witness Mohamad Sallam says a viral video shows people he does not know standing in front of his house yelling the slurs.
"We are Muslim, it's against our religion to be racist against anybody," Sallam said.
Sallam said his brother died earlier that day and people were coming over to pay their respects. However, he said he did not know the people allegedly yelling the slurs.
"We are not okay with that, we told them so many times to leave," Sallam said.
Glass-Smith's attorney, Johnny Hawkins, wants to see more done after Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged the 18-year-old driver with only two misdemeanors related to the crash.
"We would like for prosecuting attorney Mrs. Kym Worthy, to use all of her resources to not just hold 1 person responsible," Hawkins said.
"We think that the elements and facts support the bringing a hate crime towards these individuals," Hawkins said.
Worthy's office says it requested a warrant for a 20-year-old Detroit man involved in the incident following the crash, but that request was denied.
Nabih Ayad with the Arab American Civil Rights League says his group reached out to Glass-Smith to apologize for what she experienced and hopes the incident does not define the Arab American community.
"if there was criminal activity that was done, the prosecution will come through that and the investigation will comb through that," Ayad said.
"We shouldn't allow a single incident to reflect or define a certain community," Ayad said.
Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison released a statement saying: "The Detroit Police Department will not tolerate threats, intimidation, harassment, or any behavior that causes our residents to feel unsafe."
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