Man caught on video spewing racist insults to Montreal family arrested

Montreal police arrested the man who was seen on video spewing racist insults on Aug. 11.

“Go back to where you came from,” said a man in French, insulting a family in front of their home in Montreal’s Lasalle, as he was walking by.

Nadisha Hosein was in the car with her eight-year-old daughter when this happened, as they were heading out to tutoring.

He told them they needed to return to India or Pakistan, and demanded they stop speaking English to him.

“We’ve never experienced anything like this ever in our lives,” she told CityNews on August 16.

“He said, ‘You people have to learn to keep your car in the driveway or on the street,’” she recounted. “My husband was outside with me and he was the driveway and he said, ‘What’s your problem? She’s just waiting for you to pass. and then she’ll continue backing up.’ And he said this in English and to which the guy responded, ‘We live in Quebec. You have to learn to speak French. Don’t talk to me in English.’”

“Regardless that I spoke in French with the man, all he could see was the colour of our skin,” said Hosein on Friday.

Police say investigators from the Hate Crimes and Incidents Module have met with the man. He was arrested Thursday morning.

Investigators told Hosein that the man was released with the promise to appear in court.

“She got a restraining order on him so he wouldn’t be able to walk on our street as well as three streets away from us,” Hosein said. “So there’s about a block radius that he’s not allowed to walk and if we do see him on our street, we are allowed to call 911 and press charges.”

“I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that he’s not allowed to be on our street,” she added.

“We’re hoping that this would be an encouragement for other people to to that are victimized by this kind of racial hatred to record the incident and immediately report it to to the SPVM and to insist that that investigation be conducted,” said Alain Babineau, Director of Racial Profiling and Public Safety for the Red Coalition.

Authorities also say the man is involved in a separate incident of an alleged assault, intimidating a Montreal journalist who was covering the story last month.

The case has now been submitted to the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, just after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged all police forces to take harassment against journalists seriously. 

After man’s personal attack on August 11, Hosein and her family have been on guard.

“Since the incident, a number of neighbours have seen him are still walking our streets and around our streets and so that’s why we were afraid to leave the house freely,” she said. “Sometimes the girls like to be in the front of the house playing but I told them they’re not allowed to because I was afraid for their safety.”

“Now, I feel safe to actually leave the house and leave the house with the girls without looking both ways before we come outside, because we’re always looking over our shoulder to see if he’s there,” Hosein said. “Because if he’s there, what is he going to do if he does do anything? So, yeah, it was a it was a small victory.”

But for her eight-year-old daughter, who was present during the attack, there are worries this isn’t over yet.

“The younger one did say it’s good,” Hosein said. “However, she said, he could still come out and find his way back to us and assault us again.”