Girl In Hijab Not Attacked By Scissors According To Police

An alleged scissor attack on an 11-year-old Canadian girl wearing a hijab did not happen, according to police Monday.

Toronto Police began investigating the incident Friday after it was reported that a man attempted to attack the girl and cut her hijab while she walked to school. The alleged hate crime received widespread condemnation from a number of Canadian politicians including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Police released a statement Monday that said the “events described in the original release did not happen.”

“We had, as everyone knows, allegations of an extremely serious crime on Friday which we investigated -- we had a team of investigators who put together a significant amount of evidence and they came to the conclusion that the events that were alleged did not happen,” said Toronto Police spokesperson Mark Pugash to CTV. “We have spoken with [the girl], we have spoken to all the people the public would expect us to speak to in the course of a thorough investigation, and when we put all of that together, we looked at it very closely, and that was the conclusion that we came to.”

Police said that due to the social media attention the story was getting they wanted to release their conclusion about the incident as soon as possible.

“We are very thankful that this assault did not in fact happen. We won’t be commenting further,” said the Toronto District School Board in a statement Monday.