The sixteen-year-old victim of anti-Muslim abuse, who saw two men killed after they tried to defend her and a friend, has given an emotional thank you to the men who stepped in.
Choked with emotion, Destinee Mangum thanked the three strangers who stood up to a man hurling abuse at her and a friend on a tram in Portland, Oregon.
Two were killed, another is recovering in hospital.
“I just want to say thank you to the people who put their life on the line for me,” Mangum told a local TV crew.
“They didn't even know me and they lost their lives because of me and my friend and the way we look.”
Witnesses say the man, identified by police as Jeremy Christian, raged against Destinee Mangum and a 17-year-old Muslim girl in a hijab.
When the three men intervened, Christian allegedly stabbed them in the throats, killing two of them.
The 35-year-old white supremacist then bolted from the carriage.
“He was saying that Muslims should die,” Destinee's mother, Dyjuana Hudson, told the Oregonian newspaper.
“That they've been killing Christians for years.”
Locals have held candlelight vigils to honour the three men, urging solidarity against intolerance.
At a vigil Saturday near the train station, nearly 1,000 people gathered around a mound of bouquets and photographs, praising the men as heroes and saying they hoped others would stand up against hate.
Friends and family members described Best, Meche and Fletcher as reliable, well-liked men whose selfless bravery came as no surprise.
Fletcher, the survivor, won a poetry contest in 2013 with a poem condemning anti-Muslim prejudice.
Kareen Perkins, Best's supervisor, said his coworkers agreed that “it's just like Rick to step in and help somebody out.”
Best, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was married and had four children.
Christopher Landt told the Oregonian that Meche, a childhood friend, was someone who “would never forget about you.”
“If he knew he was going to die, he still would have done what he did.”
- with AFP
