Louisville police are investigating an attack that happened on Mother’s Day that left a military veteran with a broken nose, Wave 3 News reported.
Pamela Ahlstedt-Brown was attacked in a Kroger grocery store parking lot after a car was blocking her from leaving a parking spot, according to Wave 3 News. (RELATED: Hate Crimes Decreased During Trump’s Second Year In Office)
“I get out and I say, ‘Do you guys need any help?’ and she said, ‘F*** you, you white b****.’ I said, ‘Hold on, you don’t even know me,’” Brown said. “I said, ‘That’s fine. If you don’t need anything, that’s fine. I’ll get back in the car.’”
Ahlstedt-Brown, a disabled military veteran, said her attackers were four young black women in a Dodge Challenger or Charger, according to Wave 3 News. She claimed they threw a cup and then proceeded to assault her.
Strangers broke up the incident, Ahlstedt-Brown told Wave 3 News. She suffered a broken nose from the incident.
“They were beating me, and I was in a fetal position, covering my face, making sure they didn’t get my eyes,” Pamela Ahlstedt-Brown told WAVE 3 News. https://t.co/GQAH30DGUi
— wave3news (@wave3news) May 13, 2021
“I mean, they were beating me, and I was in a fetal position, covering my face, making sure they didn’t get my eyes,” she said.
Brown and her husband felt that that race may have been an issue in the attack, according to Wave 3 News. Brown is in an interracial marriage with biracial children.
“It’s hard for us because we all feel like, well what if we would have been there? It makes you feel helpless,” Brown’s husband, Edward, told Wave 3 News. “It was terrible for them and for me to have their mom come home in that condition.”
According to the Washington Examiner, Louisville Metro Police Department said the determination as to whether or not the incident is classified as a hate crime will be determined by the courts.
“We’re gonna collect all the evidence, present it in court, and they will decide,” a LMPD spokesperson said. “A hate crime is an enhancement, in this case, it’s an assault is where we are at at this time. The courts will eventually decide that.”
The most recent data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program for hate crimes shows that known offenders of hate crimes who were black have increased nearly 15% nationally since 2015. There were 1336 known offenders who were Black in 2015 and 1532 in 2019.