A Minnesota journalist says her parents, who are Muslim Americans, were victims of an armed hate crime in a Minneapolis suburb, Gawker reports.
Around 11:00 PM last Friday, Majida and Adly Abumayaleh drove several miles from their house in Maple Grove to pick up their teenage son from a party in a residential neighborhood. Before they were able to get out of the car, a woman approached the couple’s vehicle, demanded they roll down their windows, and became violent when the Abumayalehs didn’t comply.
The attacker, a “self-appointed watchwoman” named Nancy Kay Knoble, began pounding on the car’s windows and doors, and commanding the Abumayalehs to get out of the vehicle. And that’s when Knoble took out her pellet gun. The couple she was threatening, however, didn’t know the firearm wasn’t a more powerful model.
“She pulled the rifle and said open the window or I’ll shoot you guys,” Adly Abumayaleh tells local news station KARE. Fearful, the Abumayalehs complied. The couple exited the vehicle and, while Knoble held her gun to Adly’s back, the trio approached the house where the Abumayalehs’ son was spending time with friends.
As promised, the Abumayalehs’ child was where they said he would be and Knoble, satisfied that the family was not a threat severe enough to keep holding at gunpoint, “backed off,” according to KARE.
But the Abumayaleh family was shaken. “I thought, I am going to die this night,” Majida says tearfully.
Majida and Adly were not armed, they were not even outside of their car but Knoble, charging documents say, was pounding on their windows demanding them to get out of the car.
But the yelling wasn’t the scariest thing Knoble was doing according to the charges against her.
“She pulled the rifle and said open the window or I’ll shoot you guys,” Adly explained.
Adly said he didn’t want it to get worse so he did whatever she told him.
“She said get out of car, you need to prove your son is here and I said ok. I got out and she put the gun at my back and said walk to the house,” Adly explained.
At the house Majida and Adly’s son did come out and they said once Knoble saw that they really were the boy’s parents she backed off.
But the damage to this couple was done.
“I thought, I am going to die this night,” Majida said in tears.
Police arrested Knoble at her home nearby and recovered the crime scene pellet gun.
Mnar Muhawesh, the Abumayalehs’ daughter, is the founder and editor of Mint Press News. The media outlet engages in “independent watchdog journalism exposing detrimental effects of American imperialism, corporatocracy & fading away of our civil liberties,” according to its website.
On Tuesday, Muhawesh reported her parents’ attack on Facebook:
Mint Press News reposted Muhawesh’s statement the following morning, adding that Knoble’s assault “could be a hate crime against a Muslim-American family.”
On Thursday, Muhawesh tweeted police records showing Knoble faces charges related assault and “terrorist threats.”
