A 14-year-old Sikh boy was punched and knocked down by his classmate in the Washington State, with his father claiming that his son was targeted because he is of Indian descent, media reports said.
The boy wearing a traditional Sikh turban was beaten less than a block outside of the city’s Kentridge High School. The assault happened last week and has since drawn outrage from the boy’s family, The New Tribune reported.
Posted on Snapchat
The boy was attacked by the classmate as someone recorded it and posted it on Snapchat. In the clip, the classmate follows behind the victim and punches him, knocking him to the ground. The victim is punched several more times as he tries to protect his head, the report said.
Online speech
However, the school district said it was not rooted in hate, but spawned by hate speech online.
The victim’s father, who declined to be identified, told KIRO-TV that he feared that his son was targeted because he is of Indian descent and is a Sikh.
“I am feeling so, so bad because this happened with my son,” he said.
“He never interacted with this guy. He never know his name, I don’t want to see this happen again with my son or anyone else. I don’t want to see this,” he said.
School officials said the attack was not religiously or racially motivated, but was instead a continuation of an earlier classroom dispute.