A mother who was racially abused in the street says it made her feel unwanted in the place she had made her home. Shakila Meli was told to "go home" and "didn't belong" while at a bus stop with her children Caernarfon, Gwynedd. But the 31-year-old hairdresser who grew up in Kenya refused to back down and called the police.
The man shouting abuse has since been jailed for two years after admitting racial harassment. "It was terrifying," said Shakila, who moved to Llanllyfni near Caernarfon in north-west Wales in 2017. The events unfolded after she had taken a bus trip from her home village to Caernarfon in August, when she waved to a female friend at the bus stop while waiting to return home.
But Michael Owen Williams began insulting her, first in Welsh, which her five-year-old daughter Pegah speaks. "She came running to me and she told me 'Mum - he's saying really mean and racial things to you'," said Shakila. "She said 'he's saying that you're a dirty Muslim.
You shouldn't be here, you're illegal'." The mother-of-three said the words "really hurt", especially accusations of being in Wales illegally. "I've worked so hard, so hard for five years - me and my husband to get the money for the visa - for everything I've sacrificed, he's sacrificed.
"Now, I was finally a permanent resident and I felt it was a relief. "But for him to tell me I'm illegal, not knowing the back story of how hard I struggled just to make everything legal. That really hurt me.
" Shakila said 36-year-old W.
