Is Sydney the Islamic State capital of Australia? Have the Pakistani from the UK struck again?
An Australian TikTok personality was live-streaming when she was the victim of an alleged acid attack on Friday and says her glasses saved her sight.
Jenny Elhassan, 32, was waiting outside Old Town Hong Kong Cuisine restaurant in Sydney when an SUV approached her.
“I was walking out of the restaurant,” she said on a TikTok live stream on Friday night. “A guy in a black hoodie shirt … threw acid on my face in the middle of Ramadan.”
“I thought I lost my eyesight. I was screaming when it first happened,” she said. “I couldn’t see.”
“God saved me. I had my glasses on. Imagine [if] I didn’t have my glasses on.”
Elhassan’s face and neck were burned by the chemical, and she was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital for treatment.
In another live-stream on Saturday afternoon, she showed a discharge letter that said she “presented to the facility with burn – chemical”. She has been discharged but is now in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 while at the hospital.
Police were still searching for the men on Saturday night, who are believed to have been known to Elhassan.
They have identified a black car driving up to the restaurant from CCTV footage, however the video is too blurry for a number plate to be made out. They are appealing for information from anyone who was around Dixon St at 11.15pm on Friday night, or who saw the stream on social media.
Police said they were aware of the Elhassan’s social media video which shows the alleged attack, but the precise motive is still under investigation, according to Detective Acting Inspector Sean West.
“This is completely unacceptable. And insofar as we don’t know exactly what the acid is at this stage, other than it is acidic,” he said.
Investigators were examining whether the attack is connected to other social media posts from Elhassan, who shares extensive parts of her life online.
Elhassan, who is a mother to a six-year-old, has over 150,000 followers across multiple accounts with her sister. She had previously posted about her accounts regularly being banned by TikTok.
The alleged attack is understood to be part of an ongoing conflict involving the influencer. In a late night video from the hospital, Elhassan said the perpetrators “have done this because if they didn’t react to what I did, it was going to open up other news for everyone to do things like this”.
First responders attending the scene also suffered minor injuries from the chemical.
HAZMAT crews and police conducted investigations at the scene on Saturday morning and tried to identify the chemical used.
