‘Go back to your country.' Man charged in Fremont McDonald's hate crime incident
(KRON) — Prosecutors filed hate crime charges against a man who allegedly slapped a mother inside a Fremont McDonald's restaurant, threw sauce on her daughter, stole their French fries, and told the victims, 'you Indians need to go back to your country.'
Marcus Harper, 22, of Union City, is accused of targeting an Asian Indian woman and her 9-year-old daughter while the victims were sitting in a booth eating at the fast-food restaurant.
Fremont Police Department officers described the assault at McDonald's on Fremont Boulevard as completely unprovoked.
Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson said, 'This act of hate based upon the perceived national origin of these victims is completely unacceptable. Such behavior will not be tolerated, and those who commit hate crimes will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.'
The incident happened on the afternoon of April 5. The girl was eating with her mother and father when Harper approached the family, grabbed a handful of French fries from their food tray, and ate the fries, a Fremont police officer wrote in court documents.
Harper walked away. Seconds later, he returned, made racist comments, and slapped the 36-year-old mother across her face while he was standing behind her, police said.
'Harper then threw an open packet of sauce at (the girl), staining her sweater. It is believed based on Harper's unprovoked attack and statement, 'You Indians need to go back to your own country,' that this attack was motivated by hate based on the perceived characteristics of the victims' race or ethnicity,' the FPD officer wrote.
The girl's father called 911 and Harper left the McDonald's. When officers arrived, they found surveillance videos showing what happened inside the restaurant, as well as Harper's 2003 Honda Accord outside. Police identified Harper as a suspect after viewing his 2024 mugshot and connecting him to the Honda.
On Tuesday, a police officer found Harper driving the Honda in Newark and arrested him.
During a police interrogation, Harper told officers that the father gave him a 'weird feeling' while they were inside McDonald's.
Palo Alto woman accused of spitting, yelling racial slurs at man
'Harper did not deny his actions after being shown still images taken from surveillance footage, but said he 'blacked out.' He said he believed the (woman's) husband wanted him to slap her,' an FPD officer wrote.
Alameda County prosecutors filed hate crime and battery charges against the suspect. If convicted, Harper could face up to a year in jail. He is scheduled to be arraigned at the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin Thursday.
Santa Rita Jail inmate records show Harper currently remains in custody in lieu of $110,000 bail.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
17 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Brad Lander tried to escort immigrants facing arrest. He's not alone.
Advertisement Before, volunteers might have accompanied immigrants to hearings, but only in recent weeks have they had to consider what happens when they leave 'because ICE wasn't waiting on the other side of the door before,' said Camille J. Mackler, the founder and executive director of Immigrant ARC, a collaborative of immigration legal services providers. 'We really are just there to bear witness in a nonviolent way.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Federal agents wait in a hallway outside New York City's main immigration court in lower Manhattan following the arrest of New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, June 17, 2025. JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NYT Lander, who is running for mayor, maintained that is what he was trying to do Tuesday when federal officers approached an immigrant named Edgardo to arrest him. Video shows Lander appearing to hold on to Edgardo and refusing to let go as officers were trying to arrest the man over Lander's protestations. Advertisement The Department of Homeland Security saw it differently. The agency accused Lander of assaulting and obstructing federal officers as they were performing their duties, all to boost his mayoral campaign. The altercation thrust the work of the volunteer escorts into the national debate about Trump's immigration crackdown, due process rights and the behavior of federal immigration agents. Why are people accompanying migrants at courthouses? The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency initiated a national operation last month to begin arresting certain immigrants as they leave court hearings. The new tactic works like this: An immigrant appears for a hearing in an immigration court to determine whether they can lawfully remain in the country. Suddenly, the government prosecutor asks the judge to dismiss the case. The dismissal terminates certain legal protections that the immigrant had, allowing ICE agents in the hallway to apprehend the person and place them in an expedited deportation process. As ICE began showing up at immigration courts, so did more and more volunteers — activists, faith leaders, lawyers and everyday New Yorkers looking to get involved. They often provide immigrants, many of whom lack lawyers, with legal guidance, though not necessarily representation. They pass out flyers written in Spanish, French, Arabic and other languages informing them of their rights and explaining the government's new arrest strategy. And they take down their name, country of origin and case number so that relatives can be contacted if they are detained and to look up where they are being held. Then, the volunteers try to walk with some migrants — especially those at risk of being arrested because their cases were just dismissed — out of the hearing rooms and past federal officers. 'They are armed, and a lot of them are masked,' said Allison Cutler, an immigration lawyer at the New York Legal Assistance Group, which provides legal help to low-income people, including immigrants. 'People are terrified as soon as they step foot out of the elevator.' Advertisement What can federal agents do? ICE officers are responsible for detaining noncitizens who are violating federal immigration laws. But federal officers are generally permitted to arrest anyone who attempts to obstruct an arrest, which is a federal crime. 'We can't have anyone interfering with our ICE arrest operations,' Todd Lyons, the ICE acting director, told Fox News after Lander's arrest. 'We've always said that if anyone impedes our arrest operations, no matter who you are, you will be taken into custody,' Lyons said. As of Wednesday, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, which had said it was reviewing the incident, had not brought charges against Lander. Asked about volunteers accompanying people in immigration courts, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, said, 'Anyone who actively obstructs or assaults law enforcement, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.' Have the volunteers prevented arrests? The main goal of accompanying immigrants, volunteers say, is to provide comfort and safety to people who are often afraid of showing up in court, especially during the string of arrests, and to make sure they are not alone if they are detained. It is difficult to gauge whether volunteers are deterring ICE agents from moving in for arrests. Before he was detained, Lander had shown up at the courts twice and escorted out immigrant families who appeared at risk of arrest after their cases were dismissed, walking them by federal agents. 'Does this excessive accompaniment mean that somebody didn't get detained?' Mackler, the leader of Immigrant ARC, said. 'Obviously, we would love for that to be the outcome, but more important, the goal would be to make sure that the person isn't alone.' Advertisement Federal agents have continued to arrest immigrants even when they are surrounded by volunteers, occasionally leading to volatile altercations between the officers and activists. Lander had been appearing at immigration court in conjunction with Immigrant ARC. Mackler said that her organization had trained volunteers not to act in a way that would provoke or escalate a situation with law enforcement officers. 'Our instructions for our volunteers are to not engage or interfere with law enforcement,' she said. 'But I'm also not going to tell a New York City elected official how he shows up to protect New Yorkers.' Who else is showing up at the courts? Representative Jerrold Nadler at an immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in New York, June 18, 2025. JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NYT Immigration courts — which are operated by a branch of the Department of Justice called the Executive Office for Immigration Review — are open to the public. In recent weeks, they have attracted more immigration lawyers looking to help migrants who do not have attorneys and members of the public who observe and document court proceedings to ensure transparency and accountability. Visitors are generally allowed to sit in during hearings after passing through metal detectors in the lobbies of the three Manhattan courthouses that have immigration courts. Judges can close certain proceedings to the public, especially those involving people who are sharing sensitive personal information during asylum hearings. Democratic politicians have descended on the courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza, which also houses ICE offices where detained immigrants have sometimes been held for days in overcrowded conditions. On Wednesday, Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, both Democrats, sought to conduct an oversight visit to the 10th floor but were denied access by the ICE deputy field office director, William Joyce. Advertisement 'Because we were told not to,' Joyce told the members of Congress during an exchange in the lobby. 'We will continue to go up the chain, and we will get answers,' Goldman later said at a news conference. This article originally appeared in .
New York Post
19 hours ago
- New York Post
Telegram founder Pavel Durov to split $17B fortune among 6 kids — and 100 sperm-donor babies
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said he wants to leave his nearly $20 billion fortune to 100 children he's fathered through sperm donations. The eccentric tech founder has a history of tangling with the Kremlin over free speech and was charged by French officials last year for allegedly allowing sex abuse and drug trafficking crimes to run rampant on his encrypted messaging app. He has denied those charges. The billionaire has written a will that splits his $17.1 billion fortune, according to Forbes, among his six children with three partners, as well as 100 kids across 12 countries he fathered through sperm donations stretching back 15 years, Durov told France's Le Point magazine on Thursday. 3 Pavel Durov and Irina Bolgar with their children. @missbolgar/Instagram 'I want to specify that I make no difference between my children: there are those who were conceived naturally and those who come from my sperm donations,' he told Le Point. 'They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don't want them to tear each other apart after my death.' Durov, 40, said he does not want his children to have access to his fortune for 30 years. 'I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account,' he told the magazine. Durov faces accusations from the mother of three of his children that he withheld financial support, led a secret double life and struck their then-three-year-old son so hard it sent him 'across the room,' according to two criminal complaints filed in 2023 and 2024. He has a somewhat bizarre social media presence, posting a photo of himself shirtless in a barn with baby goats earlier this year to wish Telegram users a happy Easter. Years earlier, in a 2017 Instagram post that went viral, he mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin for practically the same thing – calling on users to post photos of themselves bare-chested in the 'Putin Shirtless Challenge.' 3 Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted a photo of himself shirtless to wish users a happy Easter. @durov/Instagram Durov had been the target of Russian state blacklisting after he refused to shut down activists on VKontakte, a platform he created known as the Russian version of Facebook, including a group led by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Durov reportedly fled the country after he was involved in a traffic accident that left a police officer slightly injured. Around the same time, a private equity firm linked to the Kremlin bought a hefty stake in VK and pushed out the founding partners who backed Durov, according to The Moscow Times. In March, Durov said he had returned to his home in Dubai after Paris officials had arrested him over the summer and banned him from leaving the country. His encrypted messaging app Telegram, which boasts more than 1 billion active users, has become an indispensable communication tool during the Russia-Ukraine war. 3 Pavel Durov founded the encrypted messaging app Telegram. REUTERS Government officials have used the app to send out air raid warnings and citizens have documented war horrors firsthand. But the app has come under fire for also allowing extremist groups like the Islamic State, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists to use the platform.
New York Post
21 hours ago
- New York Post
Influencer found dead after post pleading for ‘help' — with husband shooting himself as cops closed in
A social media influencer was found dead in her home after posting an ominous message begging for help — with her husband killing himself as police closed in on him hours later. Zaria Khadejah Carr, 27, was found dead in her home in Twin City, Georgia — about 80 miles northwest of Savannah — around 9:30 p.m. Saturday after police responded to a domestic disturbance, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Just over three hours prior, Zaria had posted a desperate plea for help to her 35,000 followers of her influencer Facebook page, where she went by Duchess Dior, People magazine reported. Advertisement 'I really don't know what to do,' reads the Duchess Dior's final post, shared around 6 p.m. Saturday. '.. but i need help before i lose my life or freedom ! My kids need me !' 4 Zaria Khadejah Carr was behind the Duchess Dior Facebook account with 35,000 followers. Facebook / Dutchess Díor 4 Shamarcus Jameal Carr shot himself as police closed in on him, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Facebook / Thè Frenchman Advertisement Her husband, Shamarcus Jameal Carr — a dog breeder known as the Frenchman online — was nowhere to be found when cops arrived and Zaria's 2021 Dodge Challenger was missing. The vehicle was located some 80 miles to the south in Wayne County just before 11 p.m. 4 Zaria shared an ominous Facebook post hours before she was found dead. But when Wayne County sheriff's deputies tried to stop it, Carr shot himself before they could take him into custody. Advertisement He was rushed to a local hospital where he later died. 4 Authorities are still investigating the couples' deaths. Facebook / Thè Frenchman Sources told People magazine that Shamarcus is the man behind The Frenchmen' Facebook account, which boasted 44,000 followers sharing his life as a French bulldog breeder. Shamarcus' page features photos of maternity shoots with a woman the source identifies as Dutchess Dior, whose first name is Zaria, sources confirmed to People. Advertisement It remains unclear how Zaria died. Police said the investigations into both their deaths remain 'active and ongoing.' If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to
