A 71-year-old Sikh man from Northern California was beaten during his 6 a.m. morning walk on Monday by two suspects who have now been arrested.
Police in the city of Manteca are investigating the incident, which was caught on surveillance video, as a hate crime.
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The attack left Sahib Singh Natt hospitalized with minor injuries, as the widely circulated video of the beating prompted outrage across the country.
The video shows two men confronting Natt, kicking and knocking him down. They continue to kick the elderly man once he’s fallen down. Natt is then left lying alone on the street.
It is suspected that the attackers also had a gun.
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Among those expressing outrage was Union City Police Chief Darryl McAllister, who called it a “horrific crime.”
But that outrage turned to “disgust” for the police chief and his family, after McAllister’s 18-year-old son was named as one of the suspects.
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Tyrone Keith McAllister and another 16-year-old are the accused in the crime, and have been charged.
They face charges of attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with deadly weapons.
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According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Natt doesn’t speak English, and recounted the event to police via an interpreter.
Manteca police spokesperson Sgt. Stephen Schluer said attackers asked Natt for “some type of money” before he was hit.
“The Sikh community is a tight-knit community and after the assault, the victim went to the community leaders and they brought him to the Police Department,” Schluer said, according to the newspaper.
McAllister also addressed the incident, and his son’s alleged involvement, in an open letter on the police department’s Facebook page.
“Words can barely describe how embarrassed, dejected, and hurt my wife, daughters, and I feel right now,” he wrote, explaining that his son has been “estranged” from the family for some time.
“Violence and hatred is not what we have taught our children; intolerance for others is not even in our vocabulary, let alone our values. Crime has never been an element of our household, our values, nor the character to which we hold ourselves.”
The police chief explained that he and his wife helped track their son down so that he could be arrested and charged.
He apologized to the community, and thanked those who have “expressed kindness” in the past few days.
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“I pray that we, as a community, in conjunction with my family, can get through this and be even stronger as a result,” he wrote.
This incident is the second suspected hate crime involving a Sikh victim to occur in California in the past few days.
Last week, a 50-year-old Sikh man named Surjit Malhi was beaten.
Malhi told CBS News that two men shouted at him, saying, “Go back to your country.”
“I’m American 100 per cent, no doubt, so they say, go back to my country? This is my country,” Malhi said.
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