Business owner shares story of resilience after hate crime attack

DALLAS — Omar Omar believes the American dream is primarily about not quitting. The 40-year-old Iraq native admits he thought about it in the days and years after a deadly shooting at his business, Omar’s Wheels and Tires.

“Sometimes it goes through my mind, I want to walk away from this corner. I want to go do something else in life,” Omar said. “I don’t want to be in this business anymore.”

Federal investigators said Anthony Torres, 38, was drawn to the business in December 2015 because of its Muslim ownership. But they said it was not to support the Buckner Blvd. establishment in Dallas’ Pleasant Grove community.

“I was here. I was part of it. Everything happened from A to Z,” Omar said.

The business owner said before December 24, Torres had come to the business asking people if they were Muslim. In previous CBS News Texas reports, the Dallas police told Torres not to return to the property. But he did.

“And he came to me, he said, ‘Hey, where’s Omar?’ I’m like, ‘Omar’s not here,'” Omar said.

Omar said he denied Torres his identity that day because his brother alerted him. By the time Torres got to the parking lot, Omar recalled the chaos that followed.

“For me, coming from a different country — coming to America and seeing this happening, it shocked me,” Omar said.

Customer Enrique Garcia-Mendoza was killed. Investigators said Torres tried to shoot four other people on the premises. Omar said he shot the gunman.

“If they come into my place, you shoot me, I’m gonna shoot you back, you know,” Omar said. “Try to save the people in my parking lot and myself. And I’m defending myself here.”

Torres was arrested for multiple charges, including murder. The crime was also investigated as a hate crime.

P.J. O’Brien, acting special agent in charge at the Dallas Federal Bureau of Investigation, would count that case as a hate crime the authorities were able to document.

“The data that we have that’s most recent and complete sort of brings us to the 2020 to 2021 time frame,” O’Brien said. “We saw about an 11% increase in hate crimes from about 8,100 to about 9,100.”

According to statistics released by the FBI, nationally reported hate crime incidents increased 11.6%. The Bureau’s data reveals that 64.5% of victims were targeted because of race, ethnicity, or ancestry bias. The data also showed that 15.9% became the focus of hate because of sexual orientation bias.

O’Brien runs the massive North Texas operation, stretching from the Louisiana state line to New Mexico. He brings almost 20 years of Joint Terrorism Task Force experience — the FBI Dallas experiences, he said, what everyone else does: unreported hate.

“Unfortunately, it’s difficult because many of the times the folks that are being victimized are coming from underrepresented groups that may have a lack of trust in law enforcement and for a reason,” he said. “They may have come from countries where law enforcement was not necessarily handled the way it is here in the United States.”

So, the FBI is using social media as a part of its annual campaign to get victims out of the shadows. Videos posted to social media in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Urdu encourage victims to come forward. Agents want to hear about unlawful encounters where bias involves religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability.

O’Brien even has a pitch he’d make to those who doubt coming forward. He said this is not a government trap to capture those migrants.

“I would say that you know, you matter, and you matter to us. And we recognize that it’s our obligation to help seek justice for you,” O’Brien said. “And while it may be difficult and while you may have had poor interactions with law enforcement in the past, our goal is to really represent you. And the only way we can combat this problem is if we learn about the problem and hear about it.”

Victims can reach out to the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov.

In the meantime, Omar said he’s contributed to the Dallas community as a Muslim. He said who he worships or does not is between him and God.