06:33 PM EDT on Friday, May 12, 2006

By WCNC.com Staff
E-mail Us: 6NEWS@WCNC.com

6NEWS

Police arrested Sharon Hunter and charged her with assault.

A woman attacked outside her child's school said she was targeted because of her race.

However, police said it might not be a hate crime.

It's bad enough to be attacked, but the woman who said she was the victim of a crime said things got even worse when police didn't believe that she was targeted because of her race. Now, she's going public and demanding that her attacker be charged with a hate crime.

It started in the Newell Elementary School parking lot as Adimarys Watson pulled up to get her kids.

“She puts her hands in my car and says you &@#* Mexican, *&@**, you are *#&^ driving too fast,” Watson said.

Another parent, Sharon Hunter, was arrested for assault. She allegedly slammed the truck door on Watson's leg.

“She starts saying you don't get out of the car until I tell you to, you &#$* Mexican,” Watson said.

Watson decided not to speak out against her alleged attacker but against police for not labeling the alleged assault a hate crime.

“All her insults kept going back to Mexican, Mexican, Mexican,” Watson said.

The incident happened just one day after the immigration protest Uptown, but police, Watson said were only interested in documenting the assault.

“I don't feel like I had support from the police department at all,” Watson said.

“The assault itself was not based solely on the person's ethnicity,” Detective Doug Toggweiler with CMPD said.

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Police said this was primarily a possible case of road rage. A hate crime, they said, had to be based solely on racial bias.

“Just because a racial slur was used doesn't make it a hate crime,” Toggweiler said.

But Watson is sure she was picked on because of her race. Her only relief was her kids were inside the school when it all happened.

“It's a really sad day when someone gets attacked for the way they look,” Watson said.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee handles claims of discrimination. It   has a different definition of a hate crime. They define it as any offense motivated in whole or in part by bias. It's unclear whether this alleged assault would be a hate crime under that definition.