The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office has opened a hate crime investigation into a hit-and-run that occurred at Campus Drive and Ayrshire Farm Lane on Nov. 3, according to Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Russell Davis.
The announcement comes amid allegations of fraud against the victim on the anonymous social media app Fizz, which were published in the Stanford Review.
In the afternoon of Nov. 3, a hit-and-run traffic incident targeting Muslim Arab student Abdulwahab Omira ’23 was reported, according to an AlertSU from the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS).
In an updated AlertSU sent to community members on Nov. 4, SUDPS wrote that the suspect reportedly shouted “f*** you and your people” to the victim while driving away, after having accelerated and hit the victim. The victim was a pedestrian.
“Officers from the California Highway Patrol (CHP) – Redwood City Office responded to the hit-and-run collision,” Davis wrote. “Based on CHP’s preliminary investigation and the determination that the incident was a hate crime, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office is opening a hate crime investigation to look further into the incident.”
On Fizz and in a recent article in the Stanford Review, the credibility of the victim statements were called into question. Anonymous posters claim that the victim is a “pathological liar” and has a history of lying.
“This is the second time Stanford sends an email to the entire student body about him, the first one was my freshman year when apparently some ksig frat bro told him to ‘go back to his country,’” one post reads.
Another says, “he has lied before about having cancer, suffering a heart attack, building a Syrian refugee camp himself with bitcoin money, and many many more elaborate absurdities. He has even misrepresented pictures of himself in the hospital before.”
The poster qualified their allegations, writing, “it is too early to say whether this is another lie of his, but I think it is worth asking for more evidence before coming to conclusions.”
The Daily reached out for a statement from the victim, but was referred to a friend in the Class of 2024 who provided comment on his behalf. They wrote, “as [Omira] is still in the hospital recovering, he will not be taking interviews.”
In response to the online allegations of falsifying information in the hit-and-run case, Omira’s friend wrote, “These baseless right wing smears are nothing more than an attempt to distract from our urgent concerns about rising Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate. We’ve seen an alarming number of incidents across the country and they must be taken seriously.”
The Sheriff’s Office is actively investigating the incident and will release further information as the case develops.
The Daily has reached out to the University for comment.