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71-year-old Sikh man hit, kicked, spat on in US; 2 teens arrested

Video shows the two suspects following Sahib Singh Natt; they surround him and then kick him to the ground, knocking his turban off.

71-year-old Sikh man hit, kicked, spat on in US; 2 teens arrested

Sahib Singh Natt (71) reacts to the news of his attackers' arrest. (Photo: Twitter/@KayRecede)

After a 71-year-old Sikh man was brutally attacked during his morning walk in a California city earlier this week, the local Manteca police arrested two teenagers. Suspects Tyrone McAllister (18) and another boy aged 16 were taken into custody on Wednesday, and were charged with attempted robbery and elder abuse, in addition to assault with a deadly weapon, local media reported.

The victim was Sahib Singh Natt, a local resident. The incident took place early Monday morning.

According to the police, they received tip-off from community members after the department released surveillance footage of the attack, prompting outrage.

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The footage shows Sahib Singh taking a walk through a local park when two youngsters confront him. Singh, who does not speak English, was hit, kicked and spat on. In the video, the two suspects can be seen following him first, and then surrounding and kicking him to the ground, knocking his turban off. As Singh tries to get up, the video shows, one of them kicks him to the ground again and repeats the act.

Singh was reportedly treated at a local hospital and later released.

“He was in such a shock. He was not able to tell us exactly what happened so he would tell us one thing and then he will mumble and say something else,” a Fox40 news report quoted his relative Parminder Singh Sahi as saying. According to him, Natt has had trouble communicating since an epileptic seizure seven years ago.

The police said the incident was being investigated as an attempted robbery and could be charged as a hate crime.

The incident comes a week after another Sikh man, Surjit Malhi, claimed he was attacked and told to “go back to (his) country”. The California police are investigating it as a hate crime.

Kay Recede, a reporter with FOX40 news, tweeted that suspect Tyrone McAllister “is the estranged son of the Union City police chief”. He was arrested in April for battery and robbery in a liquor store incident.

The reporter’s verified Twitter handle posted a photo of Natt reacting to the news that the two youngsters who attacked him had been arrested. “Natt cannot speak much but smiled when we told him about the arrested,” Kay Recede posted.

The police later released McAllister’s photo taken after he was booked. Quoting a Manteca Police Department spokesman, Recede posted that the McAllister family had been helping with the investigation.

The Union City Police Department chief later issued a detailed statement. In a Facebook post, he wrote: “Words can barely describe how embarrassed, dejected, and hurt my wife, daughters, and I feel right now. Violence and hatred is not what we have taught our children; intolerance for others is not even in our vocabulary, let alone our values. Crime has never been an element of our household, our values, nor the character to which we hold ourselves.”

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