Florida isn’t necessarily known as a bastion of tolerance, that’s for sure, but on Monday, May 16, the intolerance exhibited toward Muslims by some Florida residents went from merely prejudicial to sanguinary. The following tale is a twisted one involving Islamophobia and animal cruelty.
72-year-old Lake Wales resident Jackie Hammack hated his neighbor, Azard Baksh. It is still unclear as to whether or not Mr. Baksh did anything to deserve Mr. Hammack’s animosity, but if Mr. Hammack’s statements to officers are any indication, the only transgression Mr. Baksh made against Mr. Hammack was living in his neighborhood while Muslim.
But Mr. Baksh isn’t the victim in this story. Well, not directly. He wasn’t the one left mangled on the side of the residential street he shared with Mr. Hammack. The victim was Mr. Baksh’s dog, the diminutive love of his life, Myra.
Mr. Baksh had been on the receiving end of Mr. Hammack’s irrational hatred for a while. The elder man had threatened to kill Mr. Baksh’s dog before, solely on grounds that Mr. Hammack thought Mr. Baksh was an “Islamic Muslim terrorist.” Mr. Hammack is also said to have previously told Mr. Baksh to “go back where [he came] from.”
On Monday, May 16, Mr. Hammack made good on his threats. While Mr. Baksh and Myra were out for a walk, Mr. Hammack, fully nude, released his five dogs from the house and sicced them on Myra. According to Mr. Baksh, while Mr. Hammack’s dogs attacked Myra, Mr. Hammack lobbied insults and profanities at the horrified Mr. Baksh. “Don’t walk in this street, you Muslim terrorist!” he ordered. “Stay out of here!”
The dogs bee-lined for Myra and subjected her to swift canine brutality. “The big mother dog came and grabbed Myra,” Mr. Baksh expounded. “Shook her like a teddy bear.” According to local police, Mr. Hammack then went back inside and left his dogs on Myra, but soon after, the dogs were called back into the house by Mr. Hammack’s wife. While Myra was still stunned from the attack, Mr. Hammack opened the door and sicced his dogs on her again, subjecting her small, innocent body to yet another round of brutality. When the dogs were called in by Mrs. Hammack again, Mr. Hammack sicced them a third time.
According to witnesses, each time Mr. Hammack came to the door to sic his dogs on Myra, he was completely naked. Sue White lives across the street from the Baksh and Hammack households. When Mr. Baksh came to her home trying to get Myra away from the dogs, Mrs. White caught a glimpse of Mr. Hammack at his door, fully nude. “He was standing at his door and I was sitting right there,” she told police. “I had a straight shot. It was very disturbing.”
A distraught Mr. Baksh took Myra to an emergency vet clinic. She did not survive the night, dying due to internal injuries. She suffered as she passed away.
When police arrested Mr. Hammack, he denied being nude during the incident. But when officers asked him whether he had sent his dogs to attack Baksh and Myra, the 72-year-old man said, “Oh yes sir, absolutely. I hate that terrorist prick.”
Mr. Jackie Hammond has been charged with animal cruelty, aggravated assault, and exposure of sexual organs. On the charge of animal cruelty (which is a third-degree felony in Florida), if Mr. Hammack is convicted, he could face up to five years in prison. The same punishment exists for the aggravated assault charge. But no prison sentence will bring back Mr. Azard Baksh’s dog, Myra, who was just an innocent victim of a man’s irrational prejudices. No amount of jail time will scrub clean the memories of May 16, 2016 from a grieving man’s brain. No amount of jail time will remove the blood forever stained on the cement in a Lake Wales community whose history now includes a disturbing, Islamophobic attack that left an innocent dog named Myra dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg1UXia3Czc
Featured image by Josh Plueger, available as part of the public domain.
h/t Raw Story
