Charges: Woman attacked restaurant patron for not speaking English

“I was sitting turned around like this and all of a sudden I feel something thrown on my face – boom”, said Jama.

“I live in America”.

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling for hate-crime charges against a woman accused of hitting another woman with a beer mug because she was speaking a language other than English at a Coon Rapids Applebee’s. She had to receive 17 stitches.

The aggressor has since been charged with third degree assault. After Burchard-Risch smashed the mug across Jama’s face, she ran away, but one of the managers of the restaurant followed her outside and kept an eye on her until police arrived to arrest her. She then started yelling at the family, even tossing a drink onto Jama and “roundhouse punching” the glass in her face all while he restaurant’s staff tried to escort her out of the establishment.

“I just want to say thank you so much”, said Jama, in tears, to the crowd.

Jama came to Minnesota in 2000 from Kenya.

“Somebody hit me because I was speaking a different language”.

An Anoka County prosecutor said Friday that authorities are looking into possible hate crime counts against a woman charged with attacking a diner at the Coon Rapids Applebee’s because she was speaking Swahili.

“The current charge is insufficient to communicate the seriousness of and possible bias motive for the alleged attack”, CAIR-MN executive director Jaylani Hussein said.

Meanwhile, Paul Young, an officer from the Anoka County Attorney’s Office, told reporters that additional charges could be filed against Bruchard-Risch. An ethnic Somali, she says she never imagined she would be attacked in the United States for speaking her native language. Investigators are awaiting medical reports of Asma Jama before they press further charges, he revealed.

“I’m actually thinking about moving out of Minnesota”, she said.

In 2011, Burchard-Risch pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, according to court records.