Posted on 05/23/2021 4:37:11 AM PDT by billorites
A man shot three times outside a downtown restaurant last week believes his assailant was enraged at him for taunting the man’s appropriation of Black culture and “banishing” him from hip-hop.
The shooting victim, Sean Brown, 48, recounted getting shot three times early in the evening on May 10 and offered his theory for why Zabayullah Qahir, 29, allegedly attacked him outside the Elm Street restaurant USA Chicken and Biscuit, which is owned by Qahir’s father.
Brown said Qahir, who is Arab, dressed in the attire of young urban Blacks, spoke their slang and moved with their cadence and gestures. During an argument, Brown called him a bitch and taunted him as a coward, a seller of chicken.
“I exiled him from Black culture. I told him ‘You’ll never be me — you’re banished from hip-hop,’” recounted Brown, a native of the South Bronx who said he grew up with the culture of hip-hop music.
Brown spoke to the New Hampshire Union Leader two days after he was discharged from the Elliot Hospital. During a half-hour discussion, he was passionate, sarcastic and philosophical.
He showed a reporter and photographer his bandages, which include two drainage tubes.
He underwent two surgeries, his mother said. Doctors had to repair his diaphragm, his small intestine and his pancreas, his mother said. A bullet severed Brown’s liver, but surgeons say it will heal with special bandaging, according to his mother.
Qahir was arrested shortly after the shooting on three charges of first-degree assault. A judge has ordered him held without bail.
Qahir told police he acted in self-defense. Qahir’s lawyer, Keith Mathews, did not immediately respond to a phone message and email.
Police accounts say that Qahir was mad about remarks that Brown made over the telephone to Qahir’s sister and that Brown had threatened to hit Qahir.
Brown, who has lived in Manchester for two years, said he never spoke to the sister or threatened Qahir.
He said he worked at the restaurant for about a week, was fired and was picking up his final paycheck. On Thursday, his mother, Glenda Brown, went to the restaurant to get the check — $77. She called it blood money.
“I told (the owner) my son almost lost his life because of your son. Whatever you own, I’m gonna own it,” Glenda Brown said.
On May 10, Brown said, he called ahead and went to get his paycheck. He said Zabayullah Qahir kept him waiting for about a half hour. At one point, Brown — who is 6-foot-4 and at the time weighed about 200 pounds — entered the restaurant, asked for his money and went back outside.
Qahir eventually came out. He hurled a racial slur and profanities and told Brown he wasn’t going to get paid, Brown said. That’s when Brown started taunting him.
Qahir threw a punch and missed, Brown said. When Brown started to walk away, Qahir told him to wait. Qahir entered the restaurant, retrieved a gun, returned outside and fired twice, according to court records. Then he stood over Brown and fired again, Brown said. Sean Brown
Brown said his body registered damage, but not pain, at the first shot, in the inner thigh close to the groin.
The second shot, which entered the left side of his chest and exited the right side, felt like a bad punch to the gut.
When Qahir shot the third time, “I saw a demon in his eyes,” Brown said.
Qahir faces three first-degree assault charges at the same time that an African-American man who shot Qahir in the buttocks two years ago is in jail facing charges of attempted murder. Prosecutors have said they are reviewing Qahir’s charges, which could be upgraded.
Brown believes he was the victim of a hate crime, but he’s worried about the outcome in the case. He’d liked to see Qahir charged with attempted murder, but he wondered what will happen in a system tarnished with racism.
He quipped that prosecutors may eventually think they have been too hard on Qahir.
“In a race-based society, he may have been truly overcharged,” Brown said.
Brown had his own stereotypes. He said Arabs have long-standing racial animosities against Blacks. The first shot, toward his groin, is emblematic of that hatred, he said.
Jared Bedrick, a Portsmouth attorney, said he knows Brown from a 2014 criminal case involving drug dealing. When Brown got out, he started handling paperwork for prisoners as a paralegal.
“Sean is a unique character. He thrives on nuance. Not a lot of prisoners, or anyone for that matter, is as intellectually curious as he is,” Bedrick said.
Brown said he grew up in South Bronx, in the Forest Houses projects, where he experienced the birth of hip-hop. As a kid, he was an emcee known as Kid Nice, a graffiti artist and a break dancer who earned tips on New York subways and ferries, he said.
Whites and others from outside the South Bronx have cashed in on the hip-hop culture and never given his neighborhood its due respect, Brown said, drawing a comparison to Qahir trying to appropriate hip-hop swagger.
Brown acknowledged his own trouble with the law and criminal records in the past for drug distribution, which he called “responding to the will of the people.”
Brown said he was working at USA Chicken for cigarette money after COVID-19 limited his paralegal opportunities.
His mother, 71, lives in the financial district of New York and arrived in Manchester two days after he was shot.
“I thought that’s where he would get shot, in the South Bronx,” Glenda Brown said, “but he comes to Manchester …”
“I thought that’s where he would get shot, in the South Bronx,” Glenda Brown said -— He got shot near the groin lady!
I thought being shot 3 times gave you automatic passage into this “hip hop culture” BS?
Zabayullah Qahir
small scale eugenicists
Thank you for posting this unintentionally humorous article.
kill, kill, keel
Don’t taunt someone next time and stop making a martyr out of yourself.
You’re lucky you’re alive.
No sympathy from me.
I remember Hector Berlioz flying off the handle once when he was told he would was appropriating Romantic Culture. Bought a gun and travelled all the way to Italy with murder in his heart.
The architecture is fascinating...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWghTVdDGDM
1,2,3,...1,2,3...1,2,3...
please clap, jeb.
“Shoot three times in the stomach if you want me...”
I gather this happened in NH.
We’re armed to the teeth up here.
Mess with people and you’re likely to get shot.
Man, I hate to see this kind of inner city crap come to our state.
It's getting hard to keep from laughing... :)
The Onion or the Bee???
Hard to believe what I just read. I feel confident that many wonderful people in America are doing many wonderful things. Yet, here is a full length, very uhh... descriptive “story” about utterly garbage people doing garbage things and contributing almost nothing to a functioning worthwhile society.
Oh well, carry on. Happy Sunday reading. Thanks Union Leader for sharing. I know you feel sad and bad because there are so few black people in New Hampshire.
Hard to believe what I just read. I feel confident that many wonderful people in America are doing many wonderful things. Yet, here is a full length, very uhh... descriptive “story” about utterly garbage people doing garbage things and contributing almost nothing to a functioning worthwhile society.
Oh well, carry on. Happy Sunday reading. Thanks Union Leader for sharing. I know you feel sad and bad because there are so few black people in New Hampshire.
“He thrives on nuance“
This is like a skit from “In Living Color.” With Sean Brown guest starring as Homey D. Clown ranting against The Man/Mr. Charlie.
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