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6th Grader Charged With Hate Crime For Assaulting Muslim Girl
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 31, 2011
Modified Mar 31, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 31, 2011
Modified Mar 31, 2011
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A 12-year-old Staten Island boy was marched out of school in handcuffs yesterday and slapped with felony hate-crime charges after allegedly bullying a Muslim classmate. Sources tell the Staten Island Advance that the boy, Osman Daramy, had repeatedly harassed and attacked the girl over the last two months, and yesterday he allegedly shoved her to the ground, punched her, kicked her, and tried to pull off her hijab while asking, "Are you a Muslim?" Now, where on Earth do children learn this kind of bigotry?
The girl sustained bruising and a cut on her lip; her sister tells the Post that the victim called her older brother during the attack, and he called the cops (after resisting an urge to track Daramy down and beat him up). Daramy was later arrested at Dreyfus Intermediate School and taken to a juvenile detention center in the Bronx. His mother tells the Post, "I know my son is a good boy. He's a kid, he made a mistake. It's not right for him to bug anybody for their religion."
But, other sources claim, Daramy "bugs" a wide variety of targets. "This child is a terror. He goes around terrorizing staff and students," says one teacher. And earlier this month Daramy was allegedly present when a group of students robbed a pizza deliveryman of pies and soda in the school parking lot. The deliveryman was beaten by the students before escaping, and, according to the Advance, three were arrested but Daramy "was one of the two who got away." And Daramy allegedly started this week off by going on a scissors "rampage" and cutting off a girl's hair in the classroom.
Daramy will be prosecuted before a Family Court judge. (The Post got a photo at his perp walk.) But it sounds like Daramy would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling cops—a school source tells the Advance, "The principal talked with the cops for three hours in her office, trying to get them not to make it a hate crime because it would look bad for the school."
Tagged
hate crime
hijab
kids
muslims
Stapleton
staten island
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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