SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Prosecutors in Seattle and San Francisco have accused men of hate crimes in separate incidents that officials say are targeting people of Asian descent amid a wave of high-profile and sometimes deadly violence against Americans of Asian origin since the beginning of the pandemic.
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles and across the San Francisco Bay area on Saturday, the latest in a series of demonstrations in response to what many said had become a worrying wave of anti-Asian sentiments.
“We can no longer accept the normalization of being treated as perpetual foreigners in this country,” said spokeswoman Tammy Kim at a rally in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
In a demonstration attended by more than 1,000 people at the San Francisco Civic Center, the city’s chief of police, Bill Scott, received much applause when he said: “Hate is the virus and love is vaccination.”
On Friday, prosecutors in King County, Washington, accused Christopher Hamner, 51, of three counts of malicious harassment after police said he shouted profanity and threw things at cars in two incidents last week against women and children of origin. Asia, reported the Seattle Times. Saturday.
In San Francisco, Victor Humberto Brown, 53, first appeared in court after authorities said he repeatedly punched an Asian American at a bus stop while shouting anti-Asian slander.
Brown was initially charged on misdemeanor charges, but prosecutors recently raised the case to the category of crime, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. He said in court that he has a post-traumatic stress disorder.
In Seattle, according to court documents, Hamner shouted profanity and threw things at a woman standing at a red light with her two children, aged 5 and 10, on March 16. Three days later, authorities say that Hamner turned off another car driven by an Asian woman, shouted profanity and the word “Asian” at her, then threw a bottle of water at her car after attacking her when she stopped at a parking space.
Hamner was on $ 75,000 bail on Saturday. It was not immediately clear whether Hamner, who has yet to appear in court, had hired a lawyer or would be appointed a public defender.
In the first case, the woman told her 10-year-old daughter to try to take a picture of the man on her cell phone. The woman, identified by KIRO-TV as Pamela Cole, posted about the incident on social media and a friend’s husband identified Hamner as a possible suspect.
The second woman who was approached had a panel camera in her vehicle that captured the license plate of the other car, which is registered in Hamner’s name, according to court documents. The police detective investigating the case analyzed the video and determined that the attacker “was clearly Hamner”, according to the accusations.
Cole, who said he identified himself as part Chinese and part Malaysian, said KIRO-TV she felt like “an easy target” when Hamner approached his car, clenching his fists and shouting at her “Get out! Get out! “While spewing bad words about his Asian heritage.
“I was in total shock. Are you talking to me? “Cole said to the station.
“He jumps out of the car and is attacking us,” she said. “That was the scariest part for me.”
In San Francisco, Ron Tuason, an Army veteran of Filipino, Chinese and Spanish descent, told the Chronicle that he was at a bus stop in the Ingleside neighborhood on March 13 when Brown approached him shouting “Get out of my country” before to use a racial slander designed to denigrate Asians. Tuason said Brown also said, “It is because of you that there is a problem here.”
Tuason, 56, said he believed Brown was referring to the coronavirus. Brown punched him several times, he said, knocking him to the floor. He had a black eye and a swollen cheek as a result of the attack and said he is also experiencing memory loss.
Police found Brown shortly after Tuason called 911.