The person suspected of attacking an Asian woman with a hammer last week near New York’s Times Square has been arrested, police said Wednesday.
Ebony Jackson, 37, has been charged with two counts each of felony assault, felony criminal possession of a weapon with a previous conviction and menacing, according to the New York City Police Department. She has no known address, and it was not clear Thursday if she had an attorney.
The attack occurred about 8:40 p.m. ET May 2 on West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th avenues, which is in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, police said.
Police released surveillance video that showed a woman appear to accost two Asian women walking on the sidewalk from behind. The woman demanded they remove their masks before striking one of them in the head with a hammer, police said. The suspect then ran away.
The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the assault.
The victim was identified as a 31-year-old woman who was taken to the hospital for a laceration to the head, according to authorities. The other Asian woman, 29, did not appear to suffer any physical injuries.
The attack occurred just about a block from where a 65-year-old Filipino woman was knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked outside a luxury New York City apartment building on West 43rd Street between 8th and 9th avenues. The suspect in that attack is a man who was convicted of murdering his mother in 2002, according to police. He was living at a nearby hotel that has served as a homeless shelter during the pandemic, officials said.
Hours before the hammer attack, hundreds of New Yorkers, including city officials, gathered at a rally in Flushing, Queens, denouncing the wave of hate crimes against Asian American communities.
The Stop Asian Hate march was held a day after two other Asian Americans were targeted in separate attacks in Queens and Brooklyn, police said.
A recent analysis of hate crime data revealed that the increase in anti-Asian attacks has remained consistent.
The analysis, released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes surged 169 percent when comparing the first quarter of 2021 to the same time period in 2020 across 15 major cities.
New York City accounted for the largest surge, from 13 hate crimes in the first quarter of 2020 to 42 in the same period this year — a 223 percent jump, according to the research.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
