A man suspected of punching and biting part of an Asian American man’s finger off while allegedly yelling “go back to your country” in New York City has been arrested, police announced Thursday.
The attack is the third on an Asian person in about a three-block radius of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in less than two months.
The 48-year-old victim was walking on West 43rd street and 11th Avenue on Tuesday morning when a man approached him and punched him in the face, according to the New York City Police Department.
“The individual then told the victim to ‘go back to your country’ before repeatedly punching him in his face and biting the victim’s two fingers causing the middle finger tip to be severed,” the NYPD said.
Police released a video of the suspect and are asking for anyone with information to contact them. The department’s hate crimes unit announced Thursday that the suspect, who has not been publicly identified, was arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime.
The victim was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for cuts on his forehead, a swollen eye and a severed fingertip, NBC New York reported.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he had directed the New York State Police Hate Crimes Task Force to assist in the investigation.
“In what has now become an alarming, disgusting pattern, we have learned that yet another Asian American was attacked violently in Manhattan. This needs to end. I want the Asian American community to remember that we stand with them against hate. As New Yorkers we are forever proud of our diversity and we reject any cowardly attempts to divide us,” Cuomo said in a statement.
In late March, just two avenues east of the latest attack, a 65-year-old Filipino woman was knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked outside of 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.
And earlier this month, on West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th avenues, a woman allegedly accosted two Asian women walking on the sidewalk, striking one of them with a hammer.
The suspect, who has no known address, was arrested and charged with two counts each of felony assault; felony criminal possession of a weapon with a previous conviction; and menacing.
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
