A 75-year-old Asian woman defended herself when she was attacked in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday morning and sent her attacker to the hospital. The event was the last of one wave of attacks and other crimes against Asian in the Bay Area in recent months.
KPIX-TV, a CBS-run and operated television station licensed in San Francisco, spoke to a woman named Xiao Zhen Xie, accompanied by her daughter Dong-Mei Li.
“She’s still very traumatized, very scared, and one eye is still bleeding,” Li told KPIX 5. “She still can’t see anything on the right eye and she’s still bleeding and we have something to catch the bleeding. .
Xie, who has lived in San Francisco For 26 years, she said she was quite shocked by the unprovoked attack. At that point, his instinct was to fight.
Also read Biden is concerned about violence against people of Asian descent
One witness to the incident was KPIX athletic director Dennis O’Donnell, who appeared on the scene during his morning run. In a video he took with his cell phone, Xie is seen with an injury to the side of his face and eye and with an ice pack on his face. Police said both Xie and his attacker had been taken to hospital for treatment.
Through his daughter, Xie told KPIX that he was waiting to cross the street at the traffic light when the suspect hit him in the left eye. Immediately his instincts kicked in to defend himself. Although he sustained injuries and needed medical attention, it was his attacker who ended up on the stretcher. “He found a stick nearby and defended himself,” Li explained.
Li said her mother cannot see with her left eye and has not been able to eat. The hope is that time will heal the physical and emotional wounds, but her family said the incident scared her for her life. “As you can see, she’s extremely terrified,” Xie’s grandson John Chen told KPIX 5. “She’s terrified. To even go out.”
Xie’s family has created a GoFundMe account to help her with her medical expenses. San Francisco police said they are investigating the aggravated assault. The suspect, Steven Jenkins, 39, was arrested on Thursday.
Also read Suspect in Asian spa shootings in Atlanta acted out of “sexual addiction”
Wednesday morning, there was a second victim: an 83-year-old Vietnamese named Ngoc Pham. Pham continued to recover from his injuries, including a broken nose, on Thursday. The San Francisco Community Youth Center has created a fundraising page on GoFundMe for Pham to raise money to pay for medical expenses.
Police did not disclose a motive for Jenkins’ attack, saying it was unclear whether the victim’s race played a role. “We have to do our job and investigate these cases by any means available and we have to make arrests, and we have,” San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said Wednesday. Both the police chief and the mayor pointed to the arrests made in connection with previous attacks in the city. “We need to understand not only what is happening, but why these attacks are happening,” said Mayor London Breed. “Because in some cases they don’t include robbery or theft.”
Hate crimes against Asian Americans are up 150% in 2020, even as overall hate crimes declined. In January, a 91-year-old man was thrown to the ground in Oakland’s Chinatown. An attack in San Francisco killed 94-year-old Vichar Ratanapakdee, while another attack killed 75-year-old Pak Ho in Oakland last week.
Just this week, the Asian community in the Southeast U.S reported an increase in racist violence Y hate crimes, as you go through the grief and dismay of one Massacre in and around Atlanta that left eight dead
Also read Cartoons from yesterday, today classified as ‘unsuitable’
Flower offerings were placed at the base of massage parlors where Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white man, opened fire on Tuesday and killed eight people, most of them Asian women.
“White supremacy is literally killing us,” Stephanie Cho, director of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice NGO in Atlanta, said Wednesday.
“Violence against Asian communities has gone unnoticed for many years,” he added, vigorously rejecting the aggressor’s statements about the alleged passion for the massacre.
jabf / lsm