A man who was attacked inside a grocery store in Montgomery County, Maryland, says he suffered a concussion and a broken nose all while a group of young men hurled anti-Semitic remarks at him.
The man, who did not want to be identified, told News4 he was shopping at the Giant on Flower Hill Way in Gaithersburg Wednesday afternoon, when he saw the group throwing food at customers. He said he confronted them when he saw an elderly woman was hit in the eye.
“And I went up to one of them and I said, 'There are people starving in Ukraine and yet you are having a food fight
and you know what you just did right there, you know what it's called? It's called elder abuse,'" he said. "And they started yelling obscenities at me, saying, you know, 'Fight him, fight him!'"
That's when he says the five young men boxed him in and things turned ugly.
"I unzipped my jacket and prepared to defend myself, and that's when he saw my Star of David and said, 'Let's go, Jew,'" the victim said.
"So when his punch connected with me, it made my arm go into myself and knocked my glasses off and so I couldn't really see much from then. I could just see blobs of people," he said.
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During the assault, he said he could hear some of the group mention rapper Kanye West, who recently made anti-Semitic remarks on Twitter.
"They ganged up on me and they said, 'Get him for Kanye.' And I had one person sitting on my legs, two people covering my torso, and one person covering my head and upper shoulders," the victim said.
“It shocked me. I was taken aback. I didn’t expect it from them," he said.
Soon after the attack, 19-year-old Eugene Thompson, who also goes by Michael Stewart, was arrested in the assault. Officers also found the victim's keys in his possession, police said.
Police said they're working with the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office on potential hate crime charges.
Police are still searching for the four other suspects.
