A Pakistani-Canadian boy named Noah Rabbani was beaten brutally by a white man with a bat, in an incident which is suspected to be a racism-related hate-crime. He has lost the use of his right side of the body and seems to suffer from short-term memory loss.
Noah Rabbani was walking from his friend’s house to his grandmother’s when a car stopped by near him. At first he thought it was someone being dropped off but when he swung around, a bat approaching his head took him by surprise. Noah was unable to dodge the bat and was beaten by one guy, who repeatedly kept hitting him with the bat.
“I turn around and see this bat coming toward my head. It was too fast for me to react,” he told his aunt, Salima Hafeez. “One guy just kept hitting me with the bat,” she narrated the incident her nephew had told her.
Noah crawled the distance from his friend’s house to his grandmother’s place, from where he called his brother to pick him up. Initially, he told his parents he had fell to avoid alarming them but once they saw his bleeding head, they knew something had happened. Then, the boy started having seizures and vomited as well.
While Hamilton police described it as a robbery, Salima was not convinced since the boy’s backpack was the only item that was taken and all it contained were books.
“It’s frustrating. They didn’t take his wallet or his phone. They took his backpack, which had only some books and a water bottle,” she said.
The beating had been a severe one and had taken its toll on Noah. The boy lost the use of his right side and was suffering from a short-term memory loss. The beating had also caused a great dealing of swelling as well.
“They couldn’t do much surgery because there was still a lot of swelling,” she said. “Funds are tight for his family,” she added, explaining that a single source of income in a family where there were eight children, was a problem.
Hamilton police said they were ‘looking at all aspects’ with regard to the case.
