Islamic community raising questions about whether restaurant worker’s stabbing was targeted

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2023 (830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Local and national Islamic organizations will hold a news conference Tuesday morning to call for a “fulsome investigation” into the stabbing of an 18-year-old Black Muslim woman at a Transcona restaurant last month.

“Muslim community leaders will be raising questions about whether this recent stabbing of the Black Muslim hijabi teenager at Olive Garden was targeted, as well as the charges filed against the attacker,” a statement from the Manitoba Islamic Association released Monday reads.

The woman was stabbed repeatedly in the neck while working at the restaurant at Reenders Drive and Lagimodiere Boulevard June 8. She was rushed to hospital in unstable condition and was later upgraded to stable.

The suspect, 27-year-old Robert Alan Ingram, was charged with aggravated assault, possession of a weapon and failing to comply with a probation order, but no hate crime charges were laid.

His next court date is set for Friday and he has yet to enter a plea or apply for bail.

The victim was wearing a hijab at the time of the attack. At the time, police said they believed the attack was entirely random, and that Ingram had sat in the restaurant for more than an hour before it began.

“We know for a fact that it was unprovoked and random in nature,” Police spokesman Const. Claude Chancy said the day after the assault. “It is very much unprovoked, and that’s what’s so alarming about it.”

Ingram was sentenced to 10 months in jail and 18 months of supervised probation in March 2021 after he admitted to setting fire to two vehicles in 2020. He was arrested again in June 2022 when police found him in possession of a lighter, a breach of his probation order. Police found the components for making methamphetamine after Ingram’s mother told his probation officer he had built a lab in his apartment.

He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 18 months of supervised probation, and was prohibited from possessing weapons or incendiary devices. He remained in custody on an unrelated weapons charge that was stayed, and then pleaded guilty to a different count of possessing a weapon. He was released Jan. 12.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca