A sad, troubling ending from story from El Cajon, CA (near where I live). A Muslim woman found beatened nearly to death drowned in her own blood with a note saying: “Go back to your own country.”
Read the details via AP and then watch the wrenching video of her daughter’s message — which is worth a “ditto.” The sad ending:
A woman from Iraq who was found beaten next to a threatening note saying “go back to your country” has died, and police are investigating the possibility of a hate crime.
Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Shaima Alawadi was taken off life support Saturday afternoon.
“The family is in shock at the moment. They’re still trying to deal with what happened,” said Mohebi, who met with family members.
Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious in the dining room of the family’s suburban San Diego house on Wednesday, police Lt. Steve Shakowski said.
“A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that,” Lt. Mark Coit said. “We don’t want to focus on only one issue and miss something else.”
And here is what the devastated daughter said in a news interview before her mother finally died from the beating:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.