BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) _ The attorney for a 19-year-old former Indiana University student says she believes he was intoxicated and didn't target a Muslim woman with racial slurs as he tried to remove her headscarf.
Defense attorney Katharine Liell says Triceten Bickford of Fort Wayne waived an initial hearing scheduled for Friday in a Monroe County court on felony charges including intimidation and battery. Not guilty pleas are automatic in felony cases.
Liell says Bickford is horrified by accounts of Saturday's attack and is grateful the 47-year-old woman wasn't badly hurt.
Authorities say the woman was sitting at an outdoor cafe table with her 9-year-old daughter when a man later identified as Bickford emerged from a nearby alley shouting “white power,'' anti-black racial slurs and “kill the police.''
Indiana University expelled Bickford following reports of the attack.
