New York City police are searching for an unidentified young woman who was recorded last week physically assaulting an Asian American woman and harassing her family, as well as a bystander who videotaped the confrontation.
A video recorded by Joanna Lin of New York, the bystander, and uploaded to social media this past weekend shows the young woman, along with two other unidentified females, berating another woman and her family on an F train in Manhattan last Thursday, lunging at them as well as the passengers who attempted to diffuse the situation. One of the young women pulled the victim by her hair and made an “anti-ethnic remark,” according to a statement by the NYPD. Although three people appear in the video, police have said they are looking for only one suspect.
The NYPD has said the incident is being investigated as a hate crime. The now-viral video that was posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has prompted anger and fear across the Asian American community. Sue Young, a 51-year-old tourist from Nevada, has come forward as the victim.
Though the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident, both Young and Lin said they do not believe that the incident was a hate crime. Young said she believes that stereotypes about Asians being less confrontational and more passive likely led the young women, who are Black, to see them as easy targets, but she does not believe that they were initially motivated by racial animus.
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.
