A new arrest in a five-month-old hate crime against an Asian couple in Washington State makes the fifth time in a week an African-American male has been implicated in possible hate crimes.
Police say a 15-year old African-American teenager is charged with second-degree assault in Tacoma. They have not released his name.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, police have charged an African-American man, Xavier Rashee Woody-Silas, for allegedly violently trashing a convenience store with his friend yelling racial insults at the Asian-American owners.
One of the store owners said of the attack, captured on surveillance video, “he just walks in the store with a metal pole. No one sees it at first until he starts hitting things with it. … His friend came towards the end, stuck his head through the door and said ‘That’s what you get. That’s what you get you Chinese motherf******.’”
On Saturday, New York police released the photo of an African-American man who allegedly committed a crime against an Asian woman and her children on the subway.
Authorities say the suspect used anti-Asian slurs and spit at the Asian family, then “knocked the victim’s cellular phone out of her hand and proceeded to kick it out of the back door of the subway car, onto the tracks as the train was still moving.”
Earlier in the week, also in New York, police filed hate crime charges against another African-American male in a brutal attack against an Asian woman. Police say 38-year old Brandon Elliot had previously stabbed his mother to death.
And on Friday, an African-American man, Noah Green, allegedly ran over two police officers at the U.S. Capitol, killing one of them, who was white.
Green, reported to be linked to the radical Nation of Islam Muslim group, was shot on the scene when he allegedly jumped out of his car and lunged at police with a knife. He later died. Police have not speculated as to whether he may have targeted his victims because they were police or because of race.
In the Tacoma arrest of the unidentified teen, videos apparently recorded by at least two attackers shows one of them lunging at and punching the couple while the woman screams out. In another clip, the person recording the video is cussing and lunging at the Asian man, and using racial slurs.
The Asian man, 56, reportedly suffered a broken rib.
Although that attack happened last November, there were no arrests at the time. The victims contacted police again, recently, after video surfaced.
No word on whether police are still looking for the second teenager involved.
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