The two doormen of a luxury apartment building in New York who were filmed watching an Asian woman attack last month were fired, according to the building’s owner.
The Brodsky Organization, which owns and manages apartment buildings across the city, said it had completed an investigation into the response of the two doormen who were inside the building at the time of the attack.
“Although the full video from the lobby shows that after the attacker left, doormen appeared to assist the victim and signal to a New York police vehicle, it is clear that the required emergency and security protocols were not followed,” said one statement from the Brodsky Organization. “For this reason, your employment has been terminated, with immediate effect.”
“We are extremely disturbed and shocked by this incident, and our best wishes to the victim. We have worked with the civic community of AAPI to reach out to his family, as well as to determine how best to support the fight against anti-Asian crimes”, said the statement.
The organization is retraining the entire building team “in relation to the appropriate emergency response protocols, as well as anti-prejudice awareness and observer-spectator interventions,” the statement added.
Vilma Kari, 65, who is of Filipino descent, was on her way to the church on the morning of March 29 when she was attacked on West 43rd Street between 8th and 9th avenues in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, police said.
Police released a video showing a man kicking the victim in the stomach and knocking him to the floor. The man then hit the woman’s head several times while making anti-Asian statements, police said.
The video seemed to show that, as the attack continued, at least three people in the building’s lobby stopped and watched. One of them closed the door while the attacker walked away and left the woman on the floor, the video showed.
Kari was treated at the hospital for a fractured pelvis, the prosecutor’s office said.
Brandon Elliot, 38, has been charged with two counts of second-degree assault as a hate crime and one charge of attempted first-degree assault as a hate crime in connection with the attack, said Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance Jr. .
Elliot was already on probation for life for fatally stabbing his mother in 2002, officials said. He was released from prison in November 2019, according to police. He lived in a hotel that served as a shelter for the homeless during the pandemic. He was taken into custody at the hotel, police said.
The incident, one of the two violent attacks captured by the camera in New York City recently, he was the latest in a wave of crimes against Asian Americans across the country. An analysis of police department statistics this month revealed that 16 major cities in the United States recorded significant spikes in anti-Asian hate crimes last year.
The analysis, released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that while hate crimes decreased by 7% last year, those targeting Asians increased by almost 150%.
New York was responsible for the biggest increase, from three in 2019 to 28 in 2020, an increase of 833%.
