Tracy Islamic Leaders Fear Firebombing Of Center Was A Hate Crime
TRACY (CBS13) — A molotov cocktail thrown at the door of a mosque is raising concerns whether the act was intended as a threat and a possible hate crime.
It wasn't until the sun was up on Saturday that the president of Tracy's Islamic Center saw what happened to the door the night before. Mosque leaders say until the suspect is caught, they're left to wonder if they were the target of a hate crime.
Sarah Abdulla says she loves her hometown of Tracy.
"I'm just a regular American like everyone else. Nobody ever made me feel like I'm any different. An incident like this stops you in your tracks and makes you an 'other,'" she said.
Abdulla says she doesn't know what to think about the damage on the mosque door on Saturday. The San Joaquin Sheriff's Office says someone threw a broken wine bottle filled with a flammable liquid.
In this case, the device didn't catch fire and the damage was minimal. But the Islamic center's leaders fear the intent was more than vandalism.
"What does this mean?" said board member Ghaleb Abdulla. "If something like this happens while the kids are here, even that, you don't guarantee that they'll start running around and the fear might happen. God forbid there's a fire, this would be a disaster."
The sheriff's office and the FBI are investigating the incident as a potential hate crime. Acting Tracy Police Chief Jeremy Watney says that even though his department is not handling the investigation, the vandalism concerns the whole city.
"We have three other mosques in the city of Tracy," he said. "We have extra patrols going out to the mosques to make sure we don't have a similar act occur. We're also supporting the FBI and county in their investigation."
Abdulla says her hope is for the vandal to be caught, and that they are not from her hometown.
"To think someone is capable of doing this, of thinking this way, it really boggles my mind," she said.
The center already planned to install surveillance cameras, but the one that was up and pointing directly at the door wasn't working this weekend.
