A Dunedin mother says her daughter was racially abused by a group of children before they rubbed dog faeces on her face and threatened to shoot her with a toy gun.
On Sunday, Zahra Muhammed was at Dunedin's Navy Park with her children, who are half Fijian-Indian, according to a report from Stuff.
Her nine-year-old daughter was playing in a bushy area where another group of children were also hanging out. While Muhammed said she tried to keep an eye on where her child was she "couldn't really hear or see what was going on".
She told Stuff that her daughter soon came up to her and said some of the boys, that she believed were 12 years old, put dog faeces on her face. While the group of children denied being responsible, Muhammed said one of the children had poo on his hands.
"I said 'that's unacceptable, we do not do that to people, we now have to cut our trip to the park short and go home [and] that's not fair'. I said 'your parents would be incredibly embarrassed if they knew you were doing this'," the mother told Stuff.
After Muhammed and her children got into the car to leave, her daughter told her that some of the boys had asked if she was Indian and then racially abused her. The boys then pointed what Muhammed suspects was a toy gun at the nine-year-old and threatened to shoot her.
Muhammed said she left the car and again approached the group of children, who denied being responsible and said it was two older children who had run off.
The mother said her daughter apologised to her, saying she should have just left the children alone when they asked her to leave.
"I explained she doesn't have to apologise for being somewhere and remove herself from a public space because she makes other people uncomfortable," Stuff was told.
