A man who is accused of running over a Sikh business owner in Lakewood in April will face hate crime charges in addition to attempted murder, following action from prosecutors in the First Judicial District.

The Denver Post reports that Eric Breeman entered a liquor store and caused a disturbance, ultimately telling owner Lakhwant Singh to “go back to your country.” Singh walked outside, where Breeman is alleged to have run him over, causing a spinal fracture and internal bleeding.

“What happened to Lakhwant, we don’t want to see that happen to anybody in the community,” Kanwarbir Singh Sandhu, the president of Colorado Singh Sabha in Commerce City, told The Post. “Not only Sikhs, not only Christians, we don’t want that to happen to anyone.”

A change.org petition asking for hate crime charges for Breeman had gathered more than 2,500 signatures as of Tuesday. “What happened to Mr. Singh clearly had racial bias,” the petition reads. “Let this set precedent for future legal matters.”

The initiative noted that a spokesperson for District Attorney Peter Weir had previously told indica, which reports on the Indian American community, that there was “absolutely nothing to indicate that race played any role in this crime, so it was not a hate crime.”