“I still get angry when I think about it,” she said. “I don’t understand why this woman did this. I never did anything to her. Never even spoke to her.”
Tamara Crowchief may have yelled “I hate white people” as she carried out a violent assault on a white person, but that doesn’t mean her attack was racially motivated, a Canadian judge has ruled.
The attack occurred outside a pub in Calgary, Canada, on Nov. 1, according to the Calgary Herald. Crowchief’s victim, identified as Lydia White, lost a tooth in the assault, the paper reported.
Prosecutor Karuna Ramakrishnan had tried to put Crowchief behind bars for 12 to 15 months by arguing that the indigenous woman’s “unprovoked” actions represented a hate crime, the paper reported. But Judge Harry Van Harten of the provincial court strongly disagreed.
“The offender said, ‘I hate white people’ and threw a punch,” Van Harten told those gathered in the court during his ruling. “There is no evidence either way about what the offender meant or whether . . . she holds or promotes an ideology which would explain why this assault was aimed at this victim. I am not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that this offense was, even in part, motivated by racial bias.”
The Calgary Herald reported that the attack happened suddenly and without warning.
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