The New York police department has released video footage of a suspect who is believed to have assaulted seven Asian women in Manhattan in the span of two hours on Sunday night.
According to authorities, the suspect punched, shoved or elbowed the Asian women without provocation. He was described as a man in his 20s with light complexion and blond hair, and was captured on camera wearing a light blue T-shirt, dark pants and a multicolored backpack.
The first attack occurred at 6:30pm in midtown Manhattan, where the suspect punched a 57-year-old Asian woman in the face and then fled. The woman suffered swelling to her left cheek and a cut lip, according to authorities.
“There was no prior interaction and no statements were made,” police said.
Ten minutes after the first attack, the suspect approached a 25-year-old Asian woman near Fifth Avenue and East 30th Street and hit her in the face and the back of the arm. He repeated the same pattern several more times over the next hour, hitting young Asian women – ages 21, 25, 19 and 25 – in the face before shoving one more woman, 20, to the ground near Broadway and East 8th Street and fleeing westward.
NYPD’s hate crime taskforce is investigating all seven incidents.
The attacks come as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders face an alarming spike in hate crimes across the city. Earlier this week, the family of GuiYing Ma, an Asian woman who was struck by a man with a rock last fall in Queens, announced she had died after 10 weeks in a coma. Ma is the fourth Asian American in two months to die in New York as a result of violence against members of the AAPI community.
According to data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-AAPI hate crime was up 339% nationally last year.
