A 24-year-old man of Trinida­di­an parent­age has sur­vived an ap­par­ent race hate at­tack in Flori­da. Cameron Mo­hammed was with his girl­friend last week out­side Wal­mart in Lutz, Flori­da at 3 am when he was shot by a man who be­lieved he was Mus­lim. The Pas­co Coun­ty Sher­iff's Of­fice said 25-year-old Daniel Quin­nell walked up to Mo­hammed in the de­part­ment store and asked him if he was Mus­lim or from the Mid­dle East.

Mo­hammed's de­nial, as he was raised Catholic and born in Tam­pa, was not enough to spare him be­ing shot in the face at close range by Quin­nell's "gas-pro­pelled pel­let gun" as seen in the video footage re­leased by the sher­iff's de­part­ment. De­spite car­ry­ing a .45-cal­i­bre Tau­rus pis­tol dur­ing the in­ci­dent, and be­ing a hold­er of "a con­cealed weapons per­mit for five years," Mo­hammed chose not to re­tal­i­ate and left his firearm hol­stered.

Mo­hammed, in an in­ter­view with the Tam­pa Bay Times last Fri­day, said: "I don't know. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't blow this guy away for some­thing he could change lat­er in life. I'm not go­ing to de­cide this man's fate." Quin­nell ran away af­ter shoot­ing Mo­hammed. The voiceover in the video footage stat­ed Quin­nell fired "at least 20 rounds of BBs, re­peat­ing a racial slur."

Mo­hammed's girl­friend was un­in­jured be­cause she fol­lowed his ad­vice from a con­ver­sa­tion months be­fore. Mo­hammed said he told her if they were ever in a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, she should keep qui­et and find safe cov­er. In the video footage, view­ers can see Mo­hammed's girl­friend run­ning away. The Tam­pa Bay Times stat­ed she dis­ap­peared be­hind a col­umn, safe from fire.

Quin­nell was ar­rest­ed last Thurs­day, af­ter his moth­er called the po­lice hot­line to say he was hid­ing in a ho­tel room in Land O'Lakes. Quin­nell has a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence, as his crim­i­nal record in­di­cat­ed he has been ar­rest­ed ten times in Flori­da since 2006 and many of the ar­rests in­volved bat­tery charges and vi­o­lent threats, as the Tam­pa Bay Times out­lined in its ar­ti­cle.

Quin­nell, who is mar­ried since 2010, has been ar­rest­ed twice on charges of do­mes­tic bat­tery and twice on charges of vi­o­lat­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in­junc­tions. As a felon, Quin­nell was banned from car­ry­ing firearms, which is the rea­son he gave to the po­lice as to why he had the pel­let gun. Even af­ter the po­lice in­formed him that Mo­hammed was not Mus­lim, Quin­nell said he didn't care, and that "they're all the same."

The po­lice say they have ev­i­dence to clas­si­fy the case as a hate crime, el­e­vat­ing the charge to a first-de­gree felony. The Tam­pa Bay Times said Mo­hammed was sched­uled to re­move the pel­lets on Mon­day–one over his left eye and the oth­er un­der his jaw.