1 of 1 2 of 1

Update (Dec. 6): A suspect was arrested by transit police. For more details, please see this article.

A teenage girl riding the SkyTrain was reportedly targeted for her race and attacked by another passenger.

Abdul Fádel, the young woman’s brother, described the incident in a December 5 Facebook post.

“On Monday December 4, 2017 around 10 pm the man in the photos not only physically attacked someone who is very close to me, but also racially profiled her and attempted to remove her hijab (headscarf) with force,” he wrote there. “He was screaming vulgar and disturbing racial slurs at a young lady who innocently had her headphones in minding her own business after a long day of work.”

Fádel notes that he was not present for the incident and that the police were called and are now investigating.

The attack reportedly occurred on SkyTrain's Canada Line, on car while it travelled from Waterfront Station, where the woman boarded, to Yaletown station, where she left the train and was met by paramedics and transit police. According to Fádel, the attacker exited the SkyTrain car in between those two stops, at Vancouver City Centre station.

CTV News has reported additional details that it says appeared in a second Facebook post, this one posted by the young woman herself.

“She wrote that the stranger called her names and threatened to kill her and all Muslims,” CTV News reported. “He then grabbed her headscarf and pulled her face toward his crotch.

It appears that that Facebook post has since been made private or deleted.

“She described the man slapping her across the face, and a second man stepping in to help her," CTV News reported. "The second person shoved the attacker away then stood between them until the aggressive man left the train."

In an interview with CTV, Fádel describes the incident as a “hate crime”.

"He really segregated and singled out a person of Muslim ethnicity," Fádel told the reporter.

That article states that CTV News confirmed that transit police are investigating the attack.