A day after an unidentifed man kicked and assaulted a 65-year-old Asian woman in Manhattan, police on Wednesday, 31 March, arrested the suspect and charged him with felony assault as a hate crime, the New York Police Department tweeted.
Soon after the attack, a video surfaced where a man can be seen kicking the woman to the ground and stomping on her head at least thrice in broad daylight on a Manhattan street on Tuesday, 30 March, in what appeared to be yet another incident of racist hate crime.
The incident is the latest in a growing series of pandemic-fuelled racist violence against Asians in the New York City area and comes just weeks after a shooting in Atlanta, US, that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent.
According to a New York Times report, the victim was hospitalised in Manhattan with what the police described as serious injuries.
“The video, which was released by the police drew widespread attention online. It showed a man, who appeared to be a building worker standing in the lobby, unwilling to intervene,” the NYT report stated, adding “He then closed the building’s front door while the woman lay on the ground after the attacker walked off.”
According to the Reuters report, such hate crimes rose by 149% in 2020 in 16 major cities compared with 2019, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
At a press conference on Tuesday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the video of the attack was “absolutely disgusting and outrageous”. He added that it was “absolutely unacceptable” that no one intervened or came to the woman’s aid.
“I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you do. You’ve got to help your fellow New Yorker,” NYT quoted de Blasio as saying.
New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes unit took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce, “Thanks to assistance from the public and excellent investigative work by @NYPDHateCrimes Detectives, the individual wanted for Monday’s assault on a 65-year-old Asian woman, at 360 West 43rd Street, was arrested and charged with felony assault as a hate crime.”
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