LANSING, Mich. — The East Lansing skating rink, being criticized by a Canadian hockey coach, is speaking out against him.
Fox 47 first reported the story last week about a man from Windsor Canada who claimed he coached youth hockey at Suburban Ice in East Lansing and got a racist text from a parent.
The story was originally reported on by Yahoo Sports. But when we looked further into it, some of the information didn't add up. Information including-who the man is, who sent the racist text and where exactly the coach was holding this clinic.
It's a place for families--that's what Jeff Mitchell says the organization, with locations across the state, is all about.
"The players we have in the facility-we know every family that comes through here. We're a very close knit family," said Mitchell.
So when he heard that their East Lansing facility was the subject of a viral story about a coach, Talha Javaid, who'd been racially harassed by a parent named Chase there, says he knew the story couldn't be true.
"Why Lansing, you know, I mean if anyone knows the Lansing area it's a really small community," said Mitchell.
In his original post, Javaid said he was heading to Lansing to hold a hockey clinic when he got a text from one of the children's fathers.
It said in part, "I'm not a racist but I don't feel comfortable with you teaching him [his son Riley] and the influence you will have on him. He added that it makes more sense if its not some "Muslim guy teaching it". Chase said if "it were cricket or something that would be different but it's not.”
Mitchell says allegations like these should be taken seriously, but are damaging if they're not true.
Suburban Ice records each session and entrances to and from the rink. They say they have no record of Talha Javaid ever renting ice or no video of him ever being at their arena.
"We went through all of our databases and everything, and we even looked to try and see if we had any Chase fathers with a Riley son and there was nothing in the system," said Mitchell.
Mitchell says they would deal with the situation if it truly happened.
"It can do a lot of damage. that's why we're taking the steps we've taken to make sure that people are aware that it hasn't happened. When you're in a business the one thing you have is your integrity and how you handle situations and if this was something that was real and happened here we would have definitely addressed it and made sure that the right steps were taken," said Mitchell.
Mitchell said he tried to reach out to Javaid, as well as, the Yahoo Sports reporter that originally reported it, neither have gotten back to him and he says he was blocked on social media .
When we reach out to Javaid both last week and this week to ask him about these questions, he didn't respond to us. He has since made his social media sites private.
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