Runner In Weight Vest Mistaken For Suicide Bomber

Nervous police pointed submachine guns at him.

Think you’re having a bad day when someone heckles you on a run? Try going for a jaunt in Oxford University student Goudarz Karimi’s shoes. Earlier this week, police saw him running with a weight vest and told him to stop, drop to the ground, and put his hands up. They pointed submachine guns at him.

To them, he looked like a suicide bomber.

But he was only wearing a gadget similar to that used by England’s Prince Harry himself–a popular exercise accessory that adds weight resistance.

“They told me ‘Stop! Stop! Put your hands in the air. Drop everything you have,'” recalls Karimi, a PhD student.”The police removed my weight vest and examined it. They started asking questions: ‘What are you doing?'”

“They said they had a report of someone walking in a bomb suit. There were police cars and the street was blocked.”

At that point, Karimi, an Iranian, removed his vest so that police could inspect it for explosives. He fears his ethnicity provoked the incident.

For More: The Telegraph