Report of Hit-and-Run at Stanford Leads to Hate Crime Investigation
Authorities have opened a hate crime investigation into the report of a collision on Friday that injured an Arab Muslim student at Stanford University.
According to the university, a black SUV struck the student on campus in Stanford, California, just before 2 p.m. The driver left the scene and the student was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening.
The student told university officials that the driver, whom he described as a white man in his mid-20s driving a Toyota 4Runner, made eye contact with him before speeding up and striking him, an investigator said. advisory shared Saturday by the Stanford Department of Public Safety. The student told officials the man then drove away while yelling an expletive and referring to “you and your people.”
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office said it opened a hate crime investigation based on preliminary information from the California Highway Patrol. Neither the Sheriff’s Office nor the Highway Patrol provided further comment on the investigation. Authorities have not released the driver’s name.
In a statement shared by a student group organizing campus sit-ins to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza amid the war with Hamas, the student who reported being beaten said he recognized the driver as someone “who had previously shown hostility” toward his community and that he was disappointed in what he described as a slow and inadequate response from the university.
A Stanford University spokeswoman said in an email that campus authorities would provide information to the campus community as soon as they had enough details to do so.
In a statement The university’s president, Richard Saller, and its provost, Jenny Martinez, spoke to the Stanford community on Friday that they were “deeply disturbed to learn of this report of potential hate-based physical violence on our campus.” Such violence, they added, is “morally reprehensible, and we condemn it in the strongest terms.”
The hate crimes investigation comes as tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas have roiled college campuses. Last month, Harvard students’ personal information was published online after they signed a letter, published the night of the Hamas attack on October 7, saying Israel was responsible for the violence. Columbia recently closed its campus to the public amid tensions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters, and Cornell canceled classes last week after anti-Semitic threats.
Following the hit-and-run report, Stanford’s Department of Public Safety said it is deploying additional security at “key locations” on campus.