Police are investigating the killing of an Egyptian student who died in Nottingham yesterday.
Mariam Moustafa, 18, who was an engineering student at Nottingham College, died after being attacked by a group in Nottingham three weeks before.
Nottinghamshire Police said in a statement: “At this time, from our investigation, there is no information to suggest that the assault was motivated by hate but we continue to keep an open mind.”
Police said Miss Moustafa was “punched several times outside the Victoria Centre in Parliament Street” at about 20:00 GMT on February 20. They said she then got on a bus but was “followed on to the bus by the same group of women who were threatening and abusive towards her before they got off”.
In a statement, bus company Nottingham City Transport (NCT) said one of its drivers helped Miss Moustafa.
“We would like to publicly recognise our driver, who went upstairs to intervene and acted as a barrier between the attackers and the young lady, after he asked them to leave the bus,” NCT said.
“CCTV from the bus has been provided to Nottinghamshire Police as part of their investigation into this appalling attack and we continue to support their efforts to identify the culprits.”
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Miss Moustafa’s uncle told the BBC he believed a group of about 10 girls had started beating his niece before she ran to get on a bus. He said the girls kept beating her until she passed out and a man intervened to help.
Muhammad Moustafa, said: “When Mariam was born, I did my best for her. I come here for her future and education, for my daughter, to be engineering but now it is not fair.”
Her younger sister, Mallak Moustafa, said she had seen some of the people involved “laughing about my sister’s coma” on Instagram.
“I just miss my sister and I don’t find it fair that them girls are out there having fun,” she said. “I was shocked and they should be ashamed of themselves. “We thought England would be our future, be an engineer one day, anything we wanted to be, that’s why my dad brought us to England. But it seems like it has actually ruined us, we didn’t think England was like that.”
Miss Moustafa’s uncle said the hospital dismissed her initially, before she fell ill at home and was taken back to hospital where she entered a coma.
