A 22-year-old West Bloomfield man is facing a felony hate crime charge after Oakland County prosecutors say he wrote an anti-Black racial slur on a Novi couple's driveway following a neighbor's party last month. Investigators say home surveillance footage allegedly showed Ayham Nadeem Assi approaching the driveway and appearing to write the slur, a detail that turned a dispute over parked cars into a criminal case.
According to The Oakland Press, the trouble started on Sept. 6, when the victims' neighbor threw a party and hired Assi's company to handle parking for the event. The victims spoke to their neighbors after finding vehicles parked on their lawn, the outlet reports. It was sometime after that conversation that they discovered the slur written on their own driveway.
The victims, who are Black, told investigators they felt intimidated and racially targeted, per the same account. Investigators say surveillance footage from the home allegedly showed the defendant walking up to the driveway and appearing to write the slur, though that footage itself has not been independently reviewed outside of investigators' account.
Felony Charge Carries Up to Five Years
Assi has been charged with a hate crime involving the use of force, causing bodily injury, stalking, or damaging property — a felony that carries up to five years in prison and a fine of as much as $10,000, the report states.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen D. McDonald framed the charge as a response to a broader problem. “Acts of racial intimidation are unacceptable,” McDonald said, according to the article. She added that everyone has a right to feel safe in their home and welcome in their neighborhood, and said there is no excuse for harassing or racially intimidating a family.
Part of a Wider Legal Shift in Michigan
The charge comes under a strengthened legal framework in Michigan. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the Michigan Hate Crime Act into law in 2024 after advocacy for tougher hate-crime and ethnic-intimidation penalties, and the law took effect in 2025, amending and overhauling the state's 1988 Ethnic Intimidation Act, according to Michigan Advance. Under Michigan's hate-crime statute, damaging, destroying, or defacing another person's real or personal property without consent is among the prohibited conduct that can trigger charges.
Michigan Advance's reporting also details a separate case that shows how these disputes don't always end in criminal charges. A federal racial-harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by Je Donna Dinges and her daughter India against former neighbor Ryan Wilde recently ended in a settlement. That suit accused Wilde of racial intimidation for hanging a Ku Klux Klan flag in a window facing the Dinges family's home back in February 2021 — a case in which Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy had declined to bring criminal charges, leaving the family to pursue the matter civilly instead.
No such civil case has been reported in the Novi matter so far. For now, the Oakland County case against Assi rests on the felony hate-crime charge outlined by prosecutors, with the full scope of evidence — including whether the driveway sustained lasting damage — not yet detailed in available reporting.
