SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Mourners gathered to pay respects on Tuesday for an Iraqi-American woman who died after being severely beaten in her California home by a killer who left a threatening note suggesting a hate crime, a Muslim rights group said.

Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mother of five, was found unconscious in the dining room of her rented home in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon on Wednesday morning by her 17-year-old daughter, police said.

She was taken to a local trauma center with a severe head injury, police said. Doctors took her off life support and she died on Saturday afternoon.

The memorial service for the mother whose five children range in age from 7 to 17 was being held at the Islamic Center of Lakeside, near El Cajon, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Iraqi government representatives were expected to take part, CAIR said.

Alawadi’s family was planning to fly her body back to Iraq within the week for burial, according to Sadaf Hane, civil rights director of the San Diego chapter of CAIR.

Police have said they were investigating the killing of Alawadi as a possible hate crime because of a note found near her after the beating that police said was “threatening in nature.” Authorities have stopped short of ruling out other scenarios.

If hate is confirmed as a motive in the killing, it would be the worst bias crime committed against Arabs or Muslims in years in the area, Hane said.

A friend of the family, Sura Alzaidy, told the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper the note found near Alawadi read: “Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.”

The FBI is assisting the El Cajon Police Department in the investigation, and has provided agents from a squad that is specifically trained to conduct hate crime investigations, according to FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth.

“We strongly believe that this is an isolated incident,” El Cajon Police Chief Jim Redman told reporters on Monday. “There is no free-flowing hostility.”

Foxworth also emphasized that the attack was an “isolated incident,” but would not comment on suspects or evidence.

El Cajon and nearby areas are home to some 50,000 to 60,000 immigrants and refugees of Middle Eastern descent, police said, but has not seen violent hate crimes in the past.

Silent candlelight vigils were planned in the area by members of a Facebook group ‘One Million Hijabs for Shaima Alawadi,’ which has garnered nearly 6,500 members.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-california-iraqi-memorial-idUSBRE82R01N20120328?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

Man Pleads Guilty To Hate Crime Beating In Elk Grove

December 16, 2011 7:34 PM

ELK GROVE (CBS13) – A local man has pleaded guilty to a hate crime beating outside an Elk Grove bowling alley earlier this year.

Thirty-year-old Joel Olivarez attacked Seth Parker in the parking lot of Strikes Bowling alley on June 5, 2011 after yelling gay slurs at him. He now faces 4-6 years in prison.

Parker suffered multiple fractures around his eye and nerve damage.

“Hopefully, this investigation and arrest will serve as a message to those who not only would commit a criminal act but would do so motivated by hate or bias,” said Elk Grove Police Chief Robert M. Lehner.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/12/16/man-pleads-guilty-to-hate-crime-beating-in-elk-grove/

Fri May 27,

SAN FRANCISCO – Students at a California high school have been suspended for suspected scrawling of racist graffiti and joining together in a white supremacy gesture while the senior class picture was being taken, school officials said Friday.

Soquel High School administrators decided late Wednesday to suspend about five students and ban them from the prom, Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent Gary Bloom said.

The suspensions came at the end of a school year marred by several racist incidents that included swastika graffiti and students making Hitler salutes.

The suspended students stood together wearing white shirts and bandannas during a senior class photo session in a move Bloom said was clearly intended as a display of white supremacist sentiment. Officials believe each of the students, whom they did not name, is responsible for at least one other racist incident in recent months.

Officials did not believe the students had ties to the broader white power movement in the state but had been exposed to an overall upsurge in racist hate speech across the country, Bloom said.

“They don’t understand the consequences and the implications of their actions and statements,” he said. “We’re not isolated here. And we’re really committed to nipping it in the bud.”

Soquel High Principal Ken Lawrence-Emanuel sent a letter Thursday to parents and members of this community of about 5,000 a few miles from Monterey Bay along the Central Coast.

In the letter, he said many students told their teachers they were angry about their school picture being ruined by the “white power kids.”

“The students in attendance understood this was not about freedom to wear what you want,” Lawrence-Emanuel wrote. “This was about having a school where everyone is protected from harassment.”

Students organized a rally Thursday to encourage one another to take a stand against racism, he said.

Some teens at the rally told the Santa Cruz Sentinel they did not believe all the suspensions were meted out fairly, and that at least two of the teens were not tied to any racist movement.

“Some other kids are saying dumb things and throwing Nazi salutes,” Irving Figueroa, 18, told the newspaper. But he said one of the suspended students was of Japanese descent and not in any way a white supremacist.

“It hurts me, it offends me, that they would even say that,” Figueroa said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110527/ap_on_re_us/us_calif_school_racism_3

Straight Couple Charged in Attack on Gay Couple

May 31, 2011 

A Palm Springs, Calif., couple has been charged with battery as a hate crime after a violent dispute with a gay couple over a parking space.

Russell Bates, 24, and Abigail Sheehy, 19, were arrested May 22 after being identified from photographs taken by the victims, two male domestic partners aged 63 and 45.

The men told police they had argued with a man and a woman over a parking space May 21, and when the victims starting taking their picture, the man and woman yelled derogatory slurs and began punching them.

One of the victims lost some teeth during the attack, which police say happened in front of Bates and Sheehy’s 4-year-old child.

According to KPSP, both Sheehy and Bates were charged with battery causing serious bodily injury, child abuse, and violation of civil rights (felony commission of a hate crime). Bates was also charged with probation violation.

Read the full story here.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/05/31/Hate_Crime_Charges_For_Palm_Springs_Assault/

North Fresno Jewelry Store Burglarized; Police Rule it a Hate Crime

May 24, 2011

Fresno Police are looking for the burglars who broke into a North Fresno jewelry store, stole items and spray painted a swastika on the wall.

It happened on Tuesday at the Gold Connection jewelry store near Blackstone and Nees.

Detectives say the burglars broke in through a door of the pet hospital next door. They busted through the wall and into the jewelry store.

Anyone with information is asked to call Fresno Police at (559) 621-7000.

http://www.kmph-kfre.com/story/14716389/north-fresno-jewelry-store-burglarized-swastika-found

May 17, 2011

A Los Angeles man was convicted of a hate crime and battery Tuesday for attacking a man he believed to be gay at a downtown bus stop.

Johnny Rene Serrato, 35, pleaded no contest to a hate crime and misdemeanor battery charges, according to city prosecutors.

He was sentenced by Judge Robert C. Vanderet to six months in jail, 36 months’ summary probation and was ordered to undergo psychological treatment.

Serrato attacked the victim March 29 after a chance conversation at a bus stop at 1st Street and Broadway, according to Deputy City Atty. Spencer Hart of the special trials unit.

It began when the victim, stepping onto a bus, complimented Serrato’s sunglasses, according to the police report.

Serrato, believing the victim was gay, pummeled the 39-year-old man, who was left with a bloody nose, a swollen cheek, a bump on the head and a bruised back and shoulders, according to detectives.

Serrato then spat in the face of a responding Los Angeles police officer and was arrested.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/05/hate-crime-conviction-for-attack-on-man-believed-to-be-gay.html

 May 10, 2011 –

Muslim civil rights group asks FBI to probe incident as hate crime

SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 10, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called on the FBI to investigate as a hate crime an attack on a California gas station attendant during which the alleged assailants called the victim a “jihadist” and claimed the clerk was angry Osama bin Laden was dead.

The Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SV) said the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is searching for two men suspected of assaulting the clerk, who is of East Indian descent, on Sunday in Eureka, Calif. Racial epithets were reportedly used during the assault.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20110510/pl_usnw/DC99599_1

05/03/2011

Salinas police are investigating a stabbing early Sunday as a possible hate crime.

Police said the victim was a transgendered woman who was found with a stab wound to the abdomen on East Market Street about an hour after leaving an area bar with a man in a small, black Toyota pickup.

Police spokesman Lalo Villegas confirmed that detectives are investigating the possibility the victim was attacked because of her sexual orientation. If so, he said, the unidentified suspect could face hate-crime charges.

Villegas said police were called to East Market and Griffin streets around 12:30 a.m. on a report of a stabbing. The victim was unable to talk to police when they arrived and was transported to Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital where she underwent surgery and is expected to survive.

A friend told police the victim was at Marion’s Place nightclub on the 400 block of East Market Street earlier that night, before getting into the black pickup with a Latino male between the age of 30 and 40. Villegas said police believe she was stabbed in the area of Market and Kern streets.

Police said the victim, whose identity police have yet to confirm, was a man who had undergone some surgical augmentation to become a woman.

Villegas said Marion’s Place has been the site of numerous police responses in the past. A motive for Sunday’s crime has not been determined, he said, but the reports do not indicate the victim was robbed.

http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_17982533?source=rss&nclick_check=1

Anger, shock over burning of cross next to home of black family in mostly white Calif. city

Wednesday, March 23

LOS ANGELES — Anger and shock have penetrated a prosperous, mostly white Central California community where an 11-foot cross was stolen from a church and set on fire next to the home of a black family.

“I was horrified,” said the Rev. Stephanie Raphael, president of the San Luis Obispo Ministerial Association. “We live in a paradise, and I think the first thought was, this can’t really be real.”

Police assigned extra patrols to the neighborhood in Arroyo Grande — a city that hasn’t seen a hate crime in nearly a decade — and rewards were offered for information leading to an arrest.

The cross was stolen from a garden at Saint John’s Lutheran Church weeks ago and set ablaze Friday in a lot behind the house where the family lived, police Cmdr. John Hough said.

A 19-year-old woman saw the flaming cross from her bedroom window. Officers doused burning pieces of wood with a garden hose.

A telephone call to the house was not answered Tuesday.

Police declined to release the names of the family because the incident was considered a hate crime — the first since 2002 in the city of 17,000 in mostly rural San Luis Obispo County, a region of vast farms, picturesque towns and a state university campus.

Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/fbi_joins_hate_crime_probe_of_california_cross_burning_outside_home_of_black_woman/2011/03/22/AB5lHYCB_story.html?wprss=rss_national

Man charged with hate crime for attack on Hispanics

March 28, 2011

SANTA ANA – A Costa Mesa man has been charged with a hate crime for attacking two Hispanic men without provocation outside a 7-Eleven.

Chad Martin Jurjaks, 30, is charged with two felony counts of hate crime battery causing injury. He faces a sentencing enhancement for a prior strike conviction for criminal threats in 2006, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of seven years and four months in state prison. He is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in the Orange County Superior courtroom in the men’s jail.

At about 10:30 p.m. on March 15, a 42-year-old man, his wife, cousin, and a 26-year-old nephew, were walking to a 7-Eleven in Costa Mesa, a district attorney’s news release said.

Jurjaks, who is not Hispanic, is accused of being intoxicated and confronting the victims as they approached. Jurjaks attacked the victims without provocation and yelled expletives as he punched the men one time each in the head, before walking away, prosecutors said.

The victims called 911. Costa Mesa police officers arrested Jurjaks near the convenience store.

Hate crime laws prohibit the use or threat of force by any individual in order to intimidate, interfere with, oppress, or threaten any other person from exercising any right secured by the U.S. Constitution or State or Federal laws based on “race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, or disability,” according to the news release.

http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-03-28/news/29358789_1_crime-laws-crime-battery-victims

March 3, 2011

Skinhead David Lynch was found shot to death in his Sacramento home yesterday, according to KTLA. Police are looking for the killer, who also shot a woman in the leg before leaving the scene.

The motive for the murder is unknown, although KTLA reports that there have been internal conflicts in the white supremacist world as of late.

Lynch lived in Sacramento, but had visited Los Angeles as recently as 2006 to lead one of the largest racist skinhead rallies in the country. The rally was held outside the federal building in Westwood, and demanded the release from prison of white supremacist members of The Order, a group charged with the murder of a Jewish talk show host, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

After being arrested a number of times and briefly living in Canada, Lynch was emerging once again as a leader of the American Front, a national skinhead coalition.

http://laist.com/2011/03/03/racist_skinhead_found_shot_to_death.php

MADERA, Calif. (AP) — Authorities say an arrest has been made in connection with a suspected hate crime at a central California Islamic center.

Madera County Sheriff’s Department Sheriff John Anderson told the Fresno Bee that he plans to name the suspect during a news conference Thursday morning.

Federal and local authorities began an investigation in August after a brick was thrown at the Madera Islamic Center nearly smashing a window. Signs were later posted at the center that read, “Wake up America, the enemy is here,” ”No temple for the god of terrorism,” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

The newspaper reports that the signs claimed to be from the “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

The incidents occurred during the holy month of Ramadan and national outcry over a proposed mosque near ground zero in New York City.

http://www.cbs47.tv/news/state/story/Arrest-made-in-suspected-hate-crime/yw0f3vVIhEWnbTjIC1EsGQ.cspx?rss=154

Feb. 01, 2011

Madera police are investigating as a hate crime a racial slur spray-painted on a backyard fence.

“It’s very rare. We don’t have very many hate crimes,” police Commander Robert Salas said. “Because an African-American family lives there, we’re investigating it as a hate crime.” No arrests have been made, he said.

Anitra Jones said she told police she returned home Monday to find “the N-word” written twice on the wood fence at the house she has owned for three years. Jones blamed the crime “on some knucklehead who came through.”

“But they had to know a black family lives here,” she added.

January 26, 2011

The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms is investigating faxes sent to Senator Leland Yee at his San Francisco and Capitol Offices.

The faxes were full of expletives and graphics. Lee’s office says they are similar to faxes he received in April of 2010.

One fax included a pickup truck adorned with an American flag, which was dragging a noose.

“It is quite disturbing that such racist sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee.  “As I have said in the past, it is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance. Such vitriol has no place within our political discourse or anywhere in our society.”

The messages come on the heels of Yee calling on Limbaugh to apologize for mocking the Chinese language and culture.

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-racist-fax-sent-to-state-senat-01262011,0,7836739.story?track=rss

Thursday
January 20, 2011 

Orange County man indicted on hate crime for attacking elderly woman

GOSHEN – An Orange County grand jury has indicted a Middletown man on a charge of robbery as a hate crime in connection with an attack on an 80-year-old woman.

Jesus Jimenez, 18, allegedly attacked the woman in Middletown, stole property from her and in the course of the attack, caused serious injury.

“It is made a hate crime because it is alleged that the female victim was targeted because of her age,” Orange County District Attorney Frank Phillips said.

Jimenez was charged with robbery in the first, second and third degrees.

He was arrested by Middletown City Police two days after the November 20, 2010 incident and remains in the Orange County Jail.

http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2011/January/20/Jimenez_OCGJ-20Jan11.html