Driver Purposely Plowed Into Me, Says Muslim Student at Stanford

A student was struck by a vehicle on the Stanford University campus Friday afternoon, and police are investigating the hit-and-run incident as a hate crime. Abdulwahab Omira says as he walked on the northern California campus around 2pm, someone who has displayed animosity toward Omira's community in the past accelerated and then intentionally plowed into him while shouting a hateful invective, ABC 7 reports. "As an Arab Muslim student at Stanford, I never imagined becoming the victim of a hate-driven attack," Omira, who is recovering from his injuries, says in a statement. "His hateful screams of '(expletive) you and your people' still echo in my ears as I grapple with the emotional pain this incident has left in its wake."

The California Highway Patrol is seeking the driver, who they say was a white man in his 20s with short dirty-blond hair, a short beard, and glasses, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was driving a black Toyota 4Runner. "We are profoundly disturbed to hear this report of potentially hate-based physical violence on our campus. Violence on our campus is unacceptable," the university's president says in a statement. "Hate-based violence is morally reprehensible, and we condemn it in the strongest terms." Since the Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the Israel-Hamas war, the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee says it has received reports of students across the country being threatened on campus. (More Stanford University stories.)