Man investigated for hate crime pipe attack

SALEM, Ore. — The disturbance at the Middle Eastern restaurant in Oregon was bizarre at first, but within minutes it morphed into a violent, one-sided assault.

Jason Kendall was walking down State Street about 3 p.m. Saturday when he saw a woman standing inside Al Aqsa Restaurant in Salem, according to Fox affiliate KPTV. The Mediterranean food joint is a few blocks from the state Capitol and Willamette University.

Kendall said he thought the woman was being held hostage, because “of the type of shirt she was wearing,” the news station reported. He would later tell police that holding women hostage was “what Arabs do.”

So he walked into the restaurant and told the woman that she was “free to leave,” according to KPTV.

Then he started yelling because he saw a “Saddam Hussein-looking guy” inside the restaurant, according to the Salem Statesman Journal.

“Go back to your country, terrorist,” he told the man. “Get out of America (expletive).”

Local media said employees were able to get Kendall to leave, but not for long.

He returned a few minutes later with a pipe - he told officers that it was his “Horn of Gabriel” and that he was walking a “warrior’s path” - and started beating the “Hussein” man in the head.

Police arrived and arrested Kendall, charging him with assault, unlawful use of a weapon and intimidation. He remained in jail on Sunday with bail set at $65,000. Sunday for twin blasts near holy shrines frequented by Shiites in the Syrian capital Damascus that killed at least 40 people as a suspected airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition killed at least 17 in northern Syria, activists said.

The Levant Liberation Committee said in a statement that the attack was carried out by two of its suicide attackers, claiming that they targeted pro-Iranian and pro-government militiamen. It identified the suicide attackers as Abu Omar and Abu Aisha.

The Syrian government maintains that the attacks killed 40 people. However the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights increased its estimated death toll on Sunday to 74. Conflicting casualty estimates are common in the aftermath of violence in Syria.