Man charged with hate crime quits job as college professor

A suburban Chicago man charged last month with a hate crime after allegedly hurling racial slurs and spitting at a Black woman has quit his job as a college professor, according to the school.

Alberto Friedmann, 53, of Oak Park, resigned as a neurokinesiology teacher at the National University of Health Sciences in nearby Lombard before the school completed its investigation of incident, Ron Mensching, the school's vice president for business services, said.

With Friedmann's Sept. 22 resignation, Mensching said the school halted its investigation and removed any reference to Friedmann from its website, according to the Pioneer Press.

The resignation followed a court hearing in which prosecutors detailed the Sept. 7 incident that led them to charge Friedmann with felony counts of committing a hate crime and aggravated battery.

Prosecutors said Friedmann was driving in an Oak Park grocery store parking lot when he allegedly honked his horn at the car in which the woman and her 7-year-old daughter were sitting, climbed from his vehicle, yelled slurs at her, slammed her door shut and spit at her. They alleged that Friedmann then struck the woman's vehicle twice with his car.

His attorney said that Friedmann didn't use any racial language during the incident.