Man charged with hate crime after CCTV shows another Asian woman randomly attacked on street in NYC
File image: A 55-year-old woman was punched unprovoked by a man in Chinatown
(Screengrab/Video)The NYPD has charged a man with a hate crime after he was recorded on video in New York City’s Chinatown punching an Asian woman in the face, knocking her to the ground, amid a surge in racial attacks against Asians in America.
The attacker was identified as 48-year-old Alexander Wright, who has been charged with “assault,” “assault as a hate crime” and “criminal possession of controlled substance,” Reuters reported, quoting a statement from Detective Annette Shelton.
The video footage was recorded in a surveillance camera and was posted on Twitter by assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, whose district covers Chinatown. The incident took place on Monday evening at 6.15pm.
The victim, who is reported to be a 55-year-old woman, can be seen walking in front of a cafe. A man in an orange hoodie and denim jacket walks suddenly punches her unprovoked, after which the woman falls down backwards onto the pavement.
Several people approach her and she can be seen sitting still on her back, with the support of a pillar of one of the eateries, as others look stunned.
One man who approaches the woman to check on her, asks: “Are you okay?” But the woman doesn’t respond or move.
Assemblywoman Niou, while sharing the video, said it was sent to her by one of her constituents. She wrote: “This just happened in my district in Chinatown.”
This was just sent to me from my constituent. This just happened in my district in Chinatown. He has been arrested and our precinct is investigating. pic.twitter.com/sxNfCbrlza
— Yuh-Line Niou (@yuhline) May 31, 2021
The woman was brought to the New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital in stable condition, police told local media outlets.
The incident is one in a series of attacks recently reported against Asians. Last week, an Asian cashier was punched in Manhattan. Last month, an older woman was pushed outside a bakery in Queens.
A report released by the Centre for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University found a 169 per cent increase in crimes against Asians in the first quarter of 2021, compared to the first quarter of 2020, a year that marked a “historic” increase in such attacks.
According to the analysis, New York City had the sharpest increase, rising from 13 hate crimes in the first quarter of 2020, to 42 in the same period this year, a 223 per cent jump.
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