A 19-year-old Indiana University student has been arrested in what witnesses described as a racially motivated attack on a Muslim woman.
Court records show Triceten D. Bickford faces multiple felony charges in the Saturday night incident, including intimidation, strangulation and battery.
A police report says officers responded to reports of an assault at a cafe around 7:30pm Saturday.
The report says a 47-year-old woman was sitting at a table with her 9-year-old daughter when a man shouted epithets and racially charged threats at the woman, including “white power” and “kill them all.”
According to the report, the man then grabbed the woman by the neck and forced her head toward the table, restricting her breathing while trying to take off her headscarf.
The report says her husband and passers-by were able to pull the man off of her and restrained him on the side walk until police arrived.
The man spit in the faces of the husband and passers-by, and he threatened their lives and those of arriving officers, according to the report.
The report says the man tried to kick out the windows of a patrol car and bit an officer on the calf after arriving at the jail.
The woman complained of pain, but she declined medical treatment, the Bloomington Herald-Times reported.
