Police are looking for two young men who severely beat an elderly man in Queens in what appears to be a hate crime. Lori Bordonaro reports.
A Queens family is heartbroken and police are on the lookout for two thugs who beat a beloved grandfather in what authorities are probing as a hate crime.
Ali Akmal, 70, left his Corona home last Saturday to get bread and never returned.
"He woke up and try to make us our morning bread... and after that he never came back," said his daughter Anzu Manara.
Police say he was attacked by two men as he walked on 46th Avenue near 111th Street at about 5:30 a.m. Saturday. The men allegedly asked the senior if he was Muslim or Hindu before beating him. The assailants were caught on surveillance cameras as they fled the scene, police said.
He woke up in a hospital bed, his face bruised and swollen, his body broken and his mind frail.
"He doesn't know where he is," said his granddaughter Maha Siddique. "Sometimes he goes 'I'm in Bangladesh.' "
Akmal's granddaughter says her grandfather is a "very jolly man" who taught her to sing and takes care of her grandmother who needs daily dialysis. She wonders now if he will ever fully recover.
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"I'm scared because I know for a fact he is going to be scarred for life," said Siddique. "It's like a memory you can never get rid of."
