A grocery store owned by a Nepali-American in the US state of North Carolina has been damaged after some unidentified persons attempted to set fire to it in an apparent hate crime incident.
The store in a predominately Indian locality in Charlotte city was attacked on Thursday and left with a note signed "White America" and threatening to "torture" the refugee business owners if they "did not go back to where they came from", police said.
They said officers were called to a fire at the Central Market.
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On arrival, officers were advised by the Charlotte Fire Department that the fire was contained to the front door and burned itself out by their arrival, they said, adding that one of the windows in the store's door had been broken with a rock and a note signed "White America" left near the door.
Police said they were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.
The note stated "the suspect did not want any refugee business owners and that they would torture the owner if they did not leave and go back to where they came from," they said.
"We need more safety and more security as business owners," said Kamal Dhimel, owner of the store, was quoted as saying by 'The Charlotte Observer'.
Dhimel, a Bhutan refugee who moved to the US from Nepal in 2010 and started his business in 2014, said the letter is a sign that people don't understand the importance of immigrants and refugees in the community.
"If they want to know about refugees and immigrants and our backgrounds, they need to come to us and listen to us. We can explain to them how we help this country, how we give back to this country," Dhimel said.
Investigators say video footage of the incident showed a black male suspect with a short goatee wearing a gray hoodie under a black coat, light jeans and black shoes, police said.
Central Market is a Nepali-Indian store that sells fast food, groceries and gifts, mostly from the Indian subcontinent.
People from India make up Charlotte's second largest concentration of immigrants (just below Hispanics) with 12,300 people, the report said.
Indian-Americans have faced a series of hate crime incidents recently.
A 26-year-old Indian man has been shot dead allegedly by two masked armed robbers at a convenience store of a gas station in the US' Washington state on Thursday.
Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed when a US Navy veteran opened fire at him and his friend before yelling "get out of my country" in Kansas last month.
Earlier, a 39-year-old Sikh man was shot in his driveway in Washington state. The gunman had reportedly told the man to "go back to your own country" before pulling the trigger.
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