Hate Crime: Store owned by Indian-American attacked in Louisiana

In yet another hate crime, a convenience store owned by an Indian American in Louisiana was attacked after a man rammed his pickup through the window of the store.

According to a report in The Indian Panorama, Chad Horsley attacked the store belonging to a person practicing Sikh faith thinking the owner was Muslims. Horsley, a former Sheriff’s Deputy with East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, reportedly hated Muslims for killing his fellow service members overseas, the report said.

Horsley first visited the Best Shop Store on February 27, and introduced himself as a sheriff to the clerk. He attacked the store four days later and even took the ATM machine located inside it.

Horsley is also said to have threatened Harjot Singh, a relative of the owner, with his firearm.

“We never thought anything like that, because everybody comes in, and they are nice,” Singh was quoted as saying by the media outlet. “This was the first ever incident to happen like that.”

Sheriff Jason Ard said there were a lot of different layers to the whole incident.

“There are a lot of layers to this case. It’s a bizarre one that started on February 27, 2018,” Ard wrote in a Facebook post. “That night on the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, we posted images from surveillance footage. Those images were from inside a convenience store located in the 11,000 block of Louisiana Highway 1019. We were trying to identify the individual because he claimed to be law enforcement. He said he suspected drug activity and would return to the store to do a search. He left in a white pick-up truck. We did not believe that he had any current ties to law enforcement. On March 3, 2018, we received a call from a witness. The witness tells us that a man in a white truck drove into this same convenience store.”

The damage caused by Horsley is estimated to be approximately $4,000.