The New York Police Department has “issued an arrest warrant” against a woman who threw a cup of hot coffee at an Indian American man wearing a Palestinian headscarf and his toddler son at a Brooklyn playground last week.
NYPD has identified the woman who attacked Ashish Prashar, 40, and his 18-month-old son, but haven’t disclosed her name yet, according to a post on X by him.
“The NYPD have identified the woman who attacked my 18-month old and I last week,” he wrote. They have issued an arrest warrant – we’re waiting for her to be picked up.”
“Thank you all for your support, love and blessings. I’ll keep you posted.”
NYPD is investigating the incident as a possible bias incident,” according to the New York Daily News.
Prashar recorded the incident at Edmonds Playground on DeKalb Ave in Fort Greene about 10:15 am on Nov 7.
The woman approached him as Prashar, wearing a keffiyeh, a headscarf traditionally worn by Palestinian men, watched his son play with another boy.
“She said, ‘Do you support Hamas? Do you know they are terrorists?’ ” Prashar, who was born and raised in London told the Daily News last week.
“Then she said my people are all dogs. … ‘Do you know your people burn babies? … I hope someone burns your baby in an oven,’” Prashar recounted.
When Prashar took out his phone to record the incident, the woman flew off the handle. The video, shared on Instagram, shows the woman throwing her phone toward them and then a cup of hot coffee as he picked up his son.
“My whole goal was to protect my son,” Prashar told news outlets. “There was disbelief in the beginning when she called me a terrorist. But then it got worse, and it got more serious. I needed to protect my son and keep him at a safe distance.”
His son was unharmed, Prashar told CNN, but he received “scrapes and bruises from the woman’s open-hand strikes and attempts to rip his phone away while he recorded.”
The woman, who told Prashar she is an American Jew and that “your people don’t belong here,” is a neighborhood local, according to police.
“[She] is not a representation of the Jewish community,” Prashar said.