By Matthew Miller

MASON — A 29-year-old Mason man has been charged with ethnic intimidation and assault and battery in connection with a July 19 assault on a Muslim woman at the Meridian Mall in Okemos.
Jonathan Patrick Deuel was arrested Wednesday and arraigned today in 55th District Court in Mason.
Meridian Township Police Lt. Greg Frenger declined to discuss the details of Deuel’s alleged role in the incident.
But the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported last month that two men and a woman had surrounded a 26-year-old Muslim woman at the mall and tried to pull off her face veil and abaya, a full body dress worn by some Muslim women, knocking her to the ground and shouting expletives at her.
Thasin Sardar, the outreach coordinator for the Islamic Center of East Lansing, said the woman and her husband were at the mall with their two young daughters. Her husband, a doctoral student at Michigan State University, had gone to return a stroller with the younger daughter. The woman was walking about 30 feet ahead of him with the older daughter, who is 5, when the attack occurred, Sardar said.
The woman is physically all right but has been seeing a psychologist, he said. “It’s a shock that she’s still trying to overcome.”
But the family is glad an arrest has been made, he said. “By apprehending this person, they’re sending out a strong message that these kinds of actions are un-American and not acceptable in our community.”
Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, which originally publicized the incident, said he was glad that someone had been charged, “but there are two other people who were reportedly involved with the incident.”
Frenger said the investigation “has not shown that anyone else did anything actively to warrant any criminal charges.”
Ethnic intimidation is a felony punishable by up to two years imprisonment and fines of up to $5,000. Assault and battery is a misdemeanor.
Deuel’s bond was set at $25,000, and he remained in the Ingham County Jail as of Thursday evening. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Aug. 21. He requested a court-appointed attorney.
Matthew Miller is a reporter for the Lansing State Journal
Source: Detroit Free Press
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