Racial motivation suspected in assault on Somali runner

LEWISTON – A police investigation into a claim that someone threw a substance in the face of a Somali runner during a regional cross-country race has raised fears of another racially charged incident targeting Lewiston Somalis.

Mohamed Noor, Maine’s previously unbeaten Class A cross-country champ, fell from second place to finish 124th and reported afterward that someone tossed the substance in his eyes.

Noor, who’s black and a Muslim, told Lewiston High School officials that a white man came after him twice – once at the starting line and again on the racecourse – during the 73rd New England Cross Country Championships on Saturday in Cumberland.

Members of Noor’s track team reported that the alleged perpetrator had been accompanied by another man handing out biblical pamphlets before the race. The first man located Noor beforehand, wishing him “good luck,” officials said.

Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn., said it appeared the attack was racially motivated. He said he will ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

“We have to use the legal system to send a message to those who are driven by hatred and racial motives,” Jamal said.

Lewiston High School Athletic Director Jason Fuller said he doesn’t know the motivation behind the attack, but could understand if people were calling it racially motivated. “It’s easy to make that jump,” he said Wednesday.

Lewiston is home to more than 3,000 Somali refugees, giving the city the highest concentration of Somalis in the country.

The influx has created tension, dating back to 2002 when then-Mayor Larry Raymond asked the Somalis in a letter to advise countrymen not to come to Lewiston because city resources were “maxed out.”

Four years later, a man tossed a pig’s head into a mosque during evening prayers at the Lewiston-Auburn Islamic Center.

And the cultural divide was exposed again last April by a prank in which a middle-schooler tossed a slab of leftover Easter ham onto a table surrounded by Somali Muslim youngsters. The student was suspended.

Noor told Fuller that at last weekend’s race a man threw something at him at the beginning of the race but missed before succeeding in throwing a substance similar to dirt or sand in his eyes as the runners headed into a wooded area.

Kyle Powers, a senior from St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont who was running alongside Noor when the incident occurred, said Wednesday that dirt was flying during the race, but he found it odd when a clump of sand and dirt hit the back of his head as he and Noor were entering the woods on the course. Powers finished eighth in the race.

Noor struggled to cross the finish line before being treated by an ambulance crew. Witnesses said he was throwing up and his eyes were bloodshot. It wasn’t until after the team returned to Lewiston that Noor reported the episode to his coach.

Paul Driscoll, a Lewiston booster who has a son on the cross-country team, said Noor received treatment that night at a Lewiston hospital, where a doctor said that either sand or a household cleaner could have caused the irritation to his eyes.

Noor is doing well, but he’s disheartened, Fuller said.

The incident is under investigation by the Cumberland Police Department, which is trying to identify a man who may have been wearing a green jacket or green uniform. Police declined to return calls Wednesday from The Associated Press.

The case will be referred to the state attorney general’s office’s hate crimes division once the local investigation is completed, said David Loughran, spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Augusta.