By Kristen Green
STAFF WRITER
October 25, 2001
Tamim Keshawarz figures that if he had lied about where he is from, he might not have been choked and punched in the head.
But Keshawarz is proud of his heritage, and when three passengers in his cab noticed his olive skin, dark hair and Middle Eastern accent and asked about his background, he told them he is from Afghanistan.
As soon as he uttered the name of his homeland, the woman and two men became abusive, he says.
"Why are you here?" the woman asked the bearded 37-year-old.
"I'm here to work," Keshawarz told her.
"You're here to work and blow up the U.S.," she replied.
The passengers, all of whom are white, say Keshawarz mumbled anti-American statements, according to the Harbor Police. He denies the allegation.
Keshawarz, who has lived in America for 23 years, says he stayed calm on the short ride from Croce's on Fifth Avenue to the Marriott Hotel on West Harbor Drive early Saturday morning.
"I just kept quiet because I didn't want to start anything with them," he said. "I kind of tried to ignore them."
But when Keshawarz arrived at the Marriott and stepped out of his green taxi, labeled with the company's name, Pal's Cab, one of the male passengers lunged at him and grabbed his throat, Keshawarz told police. The second male passenger tried to pay the $4.30 fare, Keshawarz said.
The first male passenger began punching him, Keshawarz alleges. He put his arms in front of his face and fought off several blows, but three or four of the punches struck him on the head and the side of his face, police said.
At the same time, the woman yelled out, "We've got an Afghanistan here!" Keshawarz recalled. She seemed to be trying to rouse other people who are angry with Afghans to support her, Keshawarz said. The second male passenger, the woman's husband, didn't do anything to intervene, Keshawarz told police.
Then the woman yelled: "Afghans! Afghans! How many more Afghans are here?" said Ahmad Bakhtari, a valet parking attendant who witnessed the incident.
Bakhtari says he told her he was from Afghanistan, too.
The woman pulled him aside. "You're not like that," she told Bakhtari, pointing at Keshawarz.
"What's wrong with him?" Bakhtari asked. But the woman never replied, he said.
Harbor Police responded to a 911 call from Marriott's security. After interviewing witnesses, they arrested Stanley Grogg, a pediatrician from Tulsa, Okla., on a misdemeanor charge of battery and a felony hate-crime charge. The other two passengers also are from Oklahoma.
No one else was arrested, and Harbor Police declined to release the other passengers' names. But Todd Rakos, a senior officer with the Harbor Police, said he is investigating the actions of the woman, who is a nurse, to determine whether there is enough evidence to charge her with a crime.
Grogg, who has been released on $33,000 bail, has not responded to messages left at the Marriott or at his home in Tulsa. His wife, Barbara, referred phone calls to his San Diego attorney, Tom Warwick.
Warwick said witnesses told him Keshawarz made remarks about the people killed in New York City on Sept. 11 that offended the passengers. He declined to elaborate.
"Unfortunately, there is a potential for a criminal charge being leveled against my client," Warwick said. "I'm doing my best to determine what happened."
Grogg, who is scheduled to be arraigned Monday afternoon, is an associate professor at Oklahoma State University attending the American Osteopathic Association at the San Diego Convention Center this week. He also is president of the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians.
A spokeswoman for the university's Center for Health Sciences said the medical college will conduct an internal investigation. Grogg, 56, has worked for OSU since April 1999.
After Grogg was arrested Saturday morning, Keshawarz says, he went home to Southcrest. He wasn't injured, he adds, just shaken up.
But Saturday night, he was back in the 1989 Chevy Caprice he rents, working to support his wife and five children and trying to make up for the $100 to $150 in business that he says he lost on the night of the alleged assault.
"I'm a little bit nervous still," he said yesterday. "It'll probably take me a while to get over this."
But Keshawarz says that if asked again where he is from, he will probably tell. In his five years as a San Diego cabdriver, no one else has ever responded negatively.
"I don't have anything to hide," he said. "I'm from Afghanistan."
Library researcher Jackie Macias contributed to this report. Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.