After a year of almost staying inside his home in Vallejo to prevent coronavirus infection, Danilo Yuchang, 59, decided he needed to get out more. When his travel agency announced that he would start business in person at his office in downtown San Francisco on Monday, Yuchang thought, “Why not?”
The Filipino Chinese was walking down Market Street, returning from his lunch break to the office after picking up Siomai at a restaurant in Chinatown, when someone pushed him from behind, knocking him to the floor. Yuchang lost consciousness when the person hit him repeatedly, breaking bones in his face and hurting his eyes until they were almost swollen and closed.
When he woke up, a doorman from a nearby hotel was hitting him, handing him napkins and asking if he was okay. Yuchang noticed that his blood spattered on the sidewalk and thought that he had been stabbed.
“I’m lucky,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “If I were stabbed, I could be dead now.”
Yuchang is among the numerous victims of a series of attacks against Asian residents in the bay area, which caused law enforcement confusion and kept members of the Asian-American community.
Last week, police arrested several suspects linked to recent attacks, including Jorge Devis-Milton, 32, who they claim had beaten Yuchang and another man on Monday afternoon. Devis-Milton was charged at San Francisco County prison on Tuesday on several charges, including assault and battery.
Yuchang said his left eye is still bleeding from Monday’s attack, and he is still recovering from fractured facial bones.
(Danilo Yuchang)
Police say Devis-Milton first attacked a 64-year-old white man about 30 minutes before Yuchang was attacked. That man, who was not identified, was also knocked to the ground and stabbed in the cheek, said San Francisco police spokesman Robert Rueca. He was transported with injuries described as potentially fatal to a local hospital, where he continues to receive medical care, officials said.
Yuchang spoke to The Times on Thursday, while on his way to the hospital for a checkup on his left eye, which continues to bleed. He has a hard time remembering things since the attack, he said. After the trip to the hospital, he said he planned to stay home for several weeks.
“Emotionally, I am still traumatized by what happened to me,” said Yuchang.
Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center born in the Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, monitored more than 3,700 self-reported instances of hate in the United States last year. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, a research office in Cal State San Bernardino, found a total of 122 anti-Asian hate crimes last year in a survey of police departments in 16 major US cities – an increase 149% compared to 49 in 2019.
San Francisco police conducted 17 hate crime investigations in 2020, compared with six the previous year, according to SFPD data. Nearly 12% of hate crimes in 2020 were directed at Asians, Rueca said.
“We don’t know if there is a problem of underreporting or just, we don’t know what,” said Rueca. “People would expect more, especially just with the recent problems that have occurred since the beginning of 2021.”
On Wednesday afternoon, San Francisco police arrested Steven Jenkins, accused of attacking an 83-year-old Asian man early in the morning at the city’s UN Plaza. Rueca said a local security guard saw the attack and started chasing Jenkins.
While on the run, Jenkins, 39, hit a 75-year-old Asian woman on 7th Street with Market Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Theater District, Rueca said. Both attacks were not provoked, the police said.
KPIX-TV Channel 5 reported that the woman, Xiao Zhen Xie, defended herself by punching her assailant. Her grandson John Chen wrote in a GoFundMe he says his grandmother – a 26-year-old San Francisco resident – has a bruised wrist and eyes that are swollen and bleeding, and he said she is “severely affected mentally, physically and emotionally”.
“She is afraid to leave the house from now on,” wrote Chen online. “This traumatic event left her with PTSD.”
Rueca said Jenkins was hospitalized for unrelated injuries.
Also on Wednesday, San Francisco police arrested three men suspected of ambushing a 67-year-old Asian man in a laundry near Nob Hill and Chinatown almost a month earlier. Security video shows the man sitting by the laundry window just before 10 pm on February 23, when the three men entered, kicked him out of the chair and dragged him to the floor.
The man told police that his attackers “threw him on the ground, beat him, stole his property and fled the scene,” officials said in a press release.
After nearly a month of investigation, police arrested Antioquia residents Calvin Berschell, 19; Jason Orozco, 20; and Nolowde Beshears, 19. Police said they suspected the three were also responsible for several car thefts near the laundry, just before the attack.
All three were charged at San Francisco County Jail on several charges, including second-degree theft and inflicting injuries on an elderly person.
On several of the city’s social media channels, San Francisco’s leaders expressed support for the city’s Asian community.
“São Francisco is a beacon of diversity. We will continue this legacy together, ending all anti-Asian discrimination. Unprejudiced. Without hate. No violence. #COVID-19 viruses have no race or nationality. It is simply a disease, ” tweeted Emergency Management Department of the city.
In a separate tweet, the San Francisco police acknowledged “an alarming increase in blatant anti-Asian violence in recent weeks” and promised to increase patrolling in predominantly Asian neighborhoods. Police chief Bill Scott also tweeted support for people affected by the Atlanta shootings.
“@SFPD is supportive of our AAPI community against these horrible crimes. Working together, we must prevent violence and hold perpetrators accountable to #StopAsianHate, ”Scott tweeted.
Yuchang is a travel agent who has lived in the San Francisco region for 21 years. But after Monday’s incident, the 59-year-old said he is seriously considering a move to Indiana.
(Danilo Yuchang)
But stemming the tide of anti-Asian attacks may be too little, too late for some San Francisco residents.
Bay Area resident for almost 21 years, Yuchang said he used to walk home late at night, without worrying about his safety. But such a traumatic incident in broad daylight on bustling Market Street – particularly in light of other attacks on Asians – disturbed him. Now, he said, San Francisco feels insecure, and he is seriously considering moving his wife to Indiana, where his sister lives.
“I don’t know why this is happening to us,” said Yuchang. “I just want to make people aware that you have to be very careful. It is not very safe. “