(Reuters) – New York police are searching for a man who punched and kicked a 65-year-old woman while making “anti-Asian statements”, the latest violent incident following a rise in hate crimes in the United States.
The New York Police Department’s hate crimes department said in a tweet https://twitter.com/NYPDHateCrimes/status/1376681962086227969 that the woman was approached in a street in Midtown Manhattan shortly before noon on Monday “by an unidentified male who punched and kicked her about the body.”
Videos posted on social media showed the attacker kicking the woman in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and stamping on her at least three times before walking away without anyone trying to protect her. One man shut the door of a nearby building without attending the victim, the footage showed.
New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said last week that targeting anyone “because of the color of their skin, the religion they worship, their sexual preference or anything else” would not be tolerated.
New York City launched plans last week to deploy an all-Asian undercover police team to combat a rise in hate crimes against Asians, which included shooting attacks at Atlanta-area spas this month in which six Asian women were killed..
Hate crimes against Asian Americans rose by 149% in 2020 in 16 major cities compared with 2019, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
