Probation officer gives office BJ to boot-camp teen
Michael Enright, College Student, Charged With Anti-Muslim Hate Crime Slashing of Cabbie Ahmed Sharif
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 10:43 am
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Ahmed Sharif would not have been worried when New York film student Michael Enright entered his cab. The kid looks like an innocent, slightly doughy college boy who presents no harm. The two quickly struck up a conversation about Sharif's immigration to America.
The cabbie had arrived from Bangladesh 25 years ago, and was now a 43-year-old father of four. Enright asked Sharif if he was Muslim. Sharif said yes. That's when Enright unleashed a string of anti-Muslim slurs.
He pulled out a knife, reached through the open security window, and began slashing Sarif across the neck. The cabbie tried to fight Enright off with one hand while continuing to drive for help.
"I saw so much anger on his face, so much hate," Sharif told the Daily News. "He's telling me ... he wants to cut my throat."
Sharif managed to pull over, jump out of the taxi, and flag down a cop. Enright was arrested, and Sharif went to the emergency room to get 15 stitches to close a gash on his throat. He needed another 17 stitches to close cuts to his arm and cheek.
Enright isn't the kind of kid you'd expect to be a hate crimes assailant. He attends the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and had just returned from Afghanistan filming a project about U.S. soldiers. But police, who later examined his notebooks, discovered that he believed Muslim are killers who are ungrateful of U.S. help.His friends say he'd also become short-fused and withdrawn since her returned from Afghanistan.
UPDATE: Michael Enright is a drunk who volunteered for a religious group that preaches racial and religious unity.
It's not unusual to find a host of contradictions within would-be killers. But Enright appears to possess more contradictions than most.
On the upside, he was a straight-A student who seemed to care a great deal about American soldiers. Friends say he loved to hear war stories, and that he felt great empathy for soldiers serving abroad.
But those same friends also say he was a notorious drunk who couldn't handle his liquor. The Daily News is reporting that Enright was pinched for trespassing last year at an apartment building, where he was drunk and yelling about dead Marines. Enright spent an hour and a half walking the halls shouting and pounding on doors.
"He rang all the bells, and someone accidentally let him in," said a witness. "He was pounding on the doors. He was really intoxicated. He couldn't even walk straight. He was saying he knew dead Marines in Afghanistan."
It's unclear if he actually knew any at the time, but he did get to know some later when he was sponsored by a religious group to shoot a film project in Afghanistan.
Intersections International is a non-profit that seeks to bring unity across racial and religious lines. Enright served the organization as a volunteer, and the group helped with his funding to travel to Afghanistan for month this spring to shoot film of the soldiers there. He also shot a film about a Vietnam vet suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
It's hard to say what made a straight-A student suddenly want to kill a random father of four. He may have simply been a boy who'd taken his infatuation with soldiers and fighting Muslims too far. Or he may have been a drunk asshole made surly by drink.
At the time of his arrest, police found an empty bottle of scotch in his backpack. They believe he was hammered at the time of the attack. As one fellow student told the Daily News, "He's not a monster. He doesn't hate Muslim people. He just blacks out and is completely irrational."
UPDATE II: A fund-raising drive for slashed cabbie Ahmed Sharif has barely raised enough to cover baby formula.
Due to wounds on his neck and arm, Ahmed will be out of work for up to four months, says the head of the cabbie's union. He can't turn his neck or pick up his 10-month-old baby.
He'll received two-third of his salary -- about 30 grand a year -- but that's not nearly enough to support a family of six in New York City. Ahmed's the sole breadwinner in his family, which includes his wife and four kids ages 11, 9, 5 and 10 months. Cabbies are provided with neither disability or health insurance.
But the union says a fundraising drive for his family has brought in barely enough to cover baby formula. (You can donate here.) We're not sure if that's due to poor publicity for the fund, or if normally generous Americans just don't give a shit about immigrants anymore, as some have suggested in the comments section below.
Either way, a father will be able unable to adequately provide for his family. He's part of an increasing number of cabbies who are facing physical and verbal attacks in New York.
A recent union survey says half of the 200 drivers interviewed were recipients of racial slurs in the last 12 months. About 35 percent were told to "Go back to your country." The drivers most targeted were immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.
UPDATE III: $30,000 in donations pour in for Ahmed Sharif's family.
It turns out that Americans are still a giving people when they know where to send their donations. Over the weekend, the cabbie's union complained that only a trickle of money had come in to help Ahmed's family. But that was likely more the fault of the union for not publicizing the fundraising drive.
Since they went public with their request, $30,000 has poured into the fund. That's equal to Ahmed's yearly salary and should be more than enough to help him through the next four months while he's out of work.
Meanwhile, Enright has been transferred to a psychiatric clinic to be evaluated by shrinks. They want to know if he's just a drunk and a punk, or something more deranged. Our guess: All of the above.
See our last episode of hate crimes: Jesse Sanford & His White Supremacist Pals Brand Mentally Challenged Navajo with Swastika.
Tags: hate crime, New York
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