HANCOCK (AP) – Maine State Police are seeking a suspect in an assault on a 21-year-old pregnant woman who was kicked in the stomach by a stranger over the weekend in a convenience store parking lot.

Police are treating the attack as a hate crime, saying it was motivated by a bias based on race.

The woman, who is black, told police that a man drinking beer with a group of men yelled racial slurs and threw a beer can at her when she pulled her car into the parking lot on U.S. Route 1, said Trooper Cliff Peterson. The man, she said, then opened the door of her car and kicked her in the stomach.

The woman drove to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, where she was kept overnight because she was having contractions. The unborn child was unharmed.

The woman, who lives in the Hancock area, did not know the suspect, and the other men he was with did not participate in the assault, Peterson said.

The case has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office. Police say the suspect is a bearded white man in his 50s with a red pickup truck.


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