VANCOUVER — Adam Casey doesn’t want to be included in any racist narratives about the part he played in rescuing a fellow University of B.C. student from a violent attack this week.
Casey, a first-year engineering student, helped end the assault on a young woman inside a Totem Park dorm room on Tuesday.
The suspect in the attack is 18-year-old Thamer Almestadi, an international student from Saudi Arabia, and in certain corners of the Internet his name and background have prompted virulent Islamophobic comments.
One website known for its anti-Muslim views posted a story about Casey’s actions with the headline “Saudi international student tries to MURDER girl with knife, gets put in chokehold by heroic Canadian boy.”
But Casey isn’t interested in being called a hero by people with that mindset.
“I think that some people are bigoted, they’re xenophobic, they’re racist — and this is just going to feed their bias,” he said. “We had one quite violent incident … and they’re going to ignore the fact that we have tens of thousands of students here from across the world and everyone gets along just fine.”
Casey said he was picking up his mail in the Totem Park common area on Tuesday when two female students ran in, shouting that someone was being choked in another building. He ran to the scene and found a man holding a woman on the floor from behind with his hands around her neck.
Casey said he used his jiu-jitsu and judo training to place the man in a chokehold — but the suspect’s response was surprising.
“One hundred per cent of people I’ve ever met, if they get put in a chokehold, they put their hands on their neck and they defend themselves,” Casey said. “He didn’t care at all. He just kept holding on to her.”
Casey said he managed to pry one of the suspect’s hands from the woman’s neck and continued holding him until his friend, Luca Berg, managed to drag the victim away with the help of other students. With the woman gone from the room, all the fight went out of the attacker, he said.
“He didn’t fight back to me, he didn’t try to leave the room, he didn’t try to run, he didn’t fight the police at all,” Casey said.
Days later, the assault seems like a dream to Casey. In his martial arts classes, he had learned a lot about self-defence, but he’d never practised a scenario like this. Still, he doesn’t remember feeling scared.
“I’m not saying that to sound brave. I’m saying there was enough adrenalin and I’d trained enough that the instincts just kicked in and I just went for it,” he said.
UBC president Santa Ono has applauded the actions of the students who responded to the attack.
Casey feels he has received too much attention for his role in the incident, while the bravery of other students has been largely ignored.
“There were two dozen people there, calling 911, doing first aid, pulling this girl away from the attacker,” he said. “If Luca and I had been the only ones there, it would have been a very different day.”
No information has been released about the relationship between the suspect and the victim, who is recovering from non-life threatening injuries.
Almestadi has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon in connection with the attack, and is scheduled to appear in court next week.
