The NYPD arrested a man on Thursday who allegedly was filmed attacking an Asian American woman in the Queens neighborhood.
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Patrick Mateo, 47, is facing charges of assault and harassment after a video clip that went viral on social media allegedly shows the suspect pushing the 52-year-old victim out of a store in Flushing on Tuesday, the NYPD confirmed to Fox News.
The police said they had received “a lot of good information” and tips from the community in an effort to arrest the attacker.
The NYPD told Fox News that the woman was waiting in line outside a bakery when the unidentified man “involved her in a verbal dispute” before throwing her on the floor. The woman hit her head on the concrete and was transported to the hospital in stable condition. She needed 10 stitches on her forehead.
Meanwhile, the suspect fled the scene, but pedestrians and witnesses who saw the attack posted videos and photos of the suspect on the internet in an attempt to find him.
The victim’s daughter, Maggie Kayla Cheng, did not respond to Fox News’s request for comment, but expressed her outrage over the violence in a social media post.
“Hate crimes have no place in our community. How do you face a lady from 1.75 to 110 kg?” she wrote on Instagram.
The incident is the latest in a series of hate crimes against the Asian community. They soared 1,900% in the last year in the state of New York, according to data from the NYPD. Some believe that violent cases can be exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
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In the first half of 2020, the NYPD reported 20 cases of crimes against Asian Americans, compared with one throughout 2019.
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Meanwhile, in parts of the California bay area, including San Francisco and Oakland, there have been numerous attacks in the past few weeks on elderly Asian Americans.