Murder of Egyptian Grocery Store Owner Being Investigated as Hate Crime

September 18, 2001

Source: The San Gabriel Valley Tribune

http://www.sgvtribune.com/index.asp?puid=1498&spuid=1498&indx=1093910&article=on

On September 18, 2001, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported that "FBI to probe grocer's death as hate crime." The article noted, "Since the terrorist attacks last Tuesday, numerous apparent backlash assaults and threats have been reported across the country against people of Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian descent. Relatives said Adel Karas, 48, left Egypt in the late 1970s to escape religious persecution for being a Coptic Christian in that largely Muslim country. He was killed at his grocery store, they fear, because his attackers mistook him for a Muslim."