St. Louis resident Alicia Clarke says she feels as if she has been “failed by the system” and is now “not feeling safe,” and she has good reason to feel this way. After she was savagely beaten and stabbed by her neighbor, her attacker walked free. The court considered it decisive that he has an IQ of 49. He is also a Muslim migrant, which may explain both the reluctance to prosecute him and the scant and incomplete coverage this incident has received.
St. Louis’ KSDK reported Monday that Clarke went out for a run near her home; when she returned, her cell phone was missing. Tracking it with Find My iPhone to her neighbor’s backyard, she went to get it, and told her neighbor, “I know you did this and I’m calling the police!” At that point the neighbor, whom KSDK describes only as a “6-foot teen,” attacked her.
“He knocked me down, pulling my hair, kicking,” Clarke recounted. When he finally stopped the attack, Clarke called the police. But then he returned: “I am on the phone with St. Louis police dispatch,” she said, “making my way to my backdoor, when he comes back with a weapon. He is on top of me. There was blood everywhere. I was literally fighting for my life at that point.”
The neighbor stabbed Clarke in the head and face with a screwdriver. Finally she was able to get away, and the thug was arrested. But after that, Clarke was assaulted again, this time by the criminal justice system. A juvenile court quickly dismissed the case against her attacker. “The most hurtful thing of all of this, is the dropped charges,” said Clarke. “That was much more hurtful than the physical assault.”
According to KSDK, “a juvenile court official said a staff attorney dropped the case before even going to the judge. The courts weren’t able to comment specifically on this incident, since it involves a juvenile. Clarke said she was told her accused attacker was found incompetent to aid in his own defense because he has an IQ of 49.”
No wonder Clarke feels as if she has been failed by the system.
And it gets worse. Alicia Clarke’s sister, Andrea Clarke Flatley, wrote on Facebook that the attacker gave his sister a broken nose, and that Alicia Clarke now also has “staples in her head and stitches to the puncture wound under her eye” as a result of the attack. Flatley noted that the attacker, whom she named as Hassan, “is a 15 year old refugee from Somalia who lives with his family. He is 6’ and approx 175lbs, much larger than my sister. He has broken into Alicia’s car 3 different times and broken into another neighbor’s house. The police were involved every single time and reported that nothing could be done since he was a minor. Surely this time would be different, though.”
It wasn’t. Because Hassan has an IQ is 49, he was found incompetent to defend himself. The prosecutor in charge of the case, Sakina Ahmad, then formally dismissed the charges. Said Flatley: “We never entered a courtroom, saw a judge, nothing. Hassan was able to go home with a family member. He likely left the building as a free person before we even learned all the above information.”
Flatley added: “The prosecutor sympathized with our frustration and explained that because he is a mentally handicapped, juvenile refugee, every safeguard available is to his benefit and to Alicia’s detriment. She went on to tell us, VERBATIM, that even if Alicia had been KILLED, the outcome would be the same and that this case would be dismissed.”
She noted later, however, that “it only took the kid 4 days to violate the restraining order” and that “SLMPD and SWAT stormed his house and took him back into custody.”
That’s good, but it doesn’t change the fact that Alicia Clarke was failed not only by law enforcement authorities, but also by the establishment media. The KSDK story contains no hint of the fact that the attacker was a Muslim migrant. It was left to the victim’s sister to reveal that on Facebook. It is clear from KSDK’s refusal to note this detail, which could be important to the case in establishing motive or in other ways, that Muslim migrants are a protected class in America today, at least among the media elites. The establishment media avoids reporting on anything that might reflect poorly upon them.
Was a concern to protect the image of migrants also part of the authorities’ considerations in dismissing the case? That’s what the KSDK reporters should have been asking. Instead, they completely whitewashed that aspect of the story. They seem more interested in fostering complacency regarding mass migration than in anything else, including reporting the news.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member