A Muslim off-duty NYPD officer, honored by the mayor as a hero, and her son became the city's latest victims of a hate crime Saturday when a bigot in Brooklyn yelled at them to "go back to your country," according to police sources.
Officer Aml Elsokary, who was off-duty and wearing her hijab, dropped off her 16-year old on Ridge Blvd. and 67th St. in Bay Ridge just before 6 p.m. After parking her car, she went back to the scene and found her son being shoved by the suspect, a white man in his 30s. When Elsokary - a native New Yorker - approached the man, he said, "ISIS (expletive), I will cut your throat, go back to your country!" She did not identify herself as a police officer and was unarmed.
The man fled the scene and cops were trying to track him down Saturday night. The episode is being investigated as a bias incident by the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit.
Officer Elsokary - who proudly wears her hijab on duty in the 90th Precinct - was praised as a hero after she ran into a burning building to save an elderly man and a baby girl in April 2014.
Elsokary and her partner were responding to a call about a fire over the police radio. The duo rushed to a smoke-filled building on Scholes St. After hearing a baby crying on the second floor, Elsokary - a mother of five - rushed up the stairs, used her jacket to open a scorching-hot doorknob and grabbed the frightened child. She also scooped up the baby's scared grandmother and rushed them both to safety.
However, "Officer Elsokary was a hero long before that remarkable day," Mayor de Blasio said at a 2014 dinner at Gracie Mansion celebrating Ramadan Iftar, the end of the annual Ramadan fast. The decorated officer had joined the police force shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to "show people that the terrible acts of that day contradicted the teachings of Islam," the mayor said. "As both a Muslim and a native New Yorker, she knew she needed to get involved."
Elsokary received a medal for her bravery.
She politely declined to speak with a reporter about the hate crime incident. It's a part of a growing list of bias crimes across the city since Donald Trump was elected as the president. Cops said from Nov. 8 through Nov. 27, there were 34 reported incidents compared to 13 in the same period in 2015.
Source: nydailynews.com
