A 15-year-old boy was arrested on Friday in connection with an attack on an Asian couple in Washington state, which was filmed and widely publicized on social media this week.
Filming programs a person wearing a red sweatshirt running up to the couple and rocking the man while the woman screams. In another video clip, the man is being cursed and appears to be pushed or beaten by the person who records the video, who also said he punched the victim in the mouth.
The 56-year-old man fractured a rib during the attack, reported NBC affiliate KING-TV in Seattle. While videos of the attack were shared on social media this week, the incident occurred last November.
The attack was reported to Tacoma police at the time, police spokeswoman Wendy Haddow told NBC News by email.
“At that time, the only suspicious information was of two black men aged between 13 and 17,” she said. “There was no known video at that time.”
However, the victim’s family contacted the authorities after seeing the video resurfaced on this week’s news, Haddow said.
Police have not released the identity of the 15-year-old who was arrested. The teenager was charged with second-degree assault, police said in a statement.
Tacoma police said earlier this week that they were investigating the attack as a hate crime, but officials could not say whether it would be prosecuted as such, KING-TV reported.
Although the police have no reason for the attack, the Asian couple were attacked amid a recent increase in racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans across the country.
Anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 of the country’s largest cities increased 149% in 2020, according to an analysis of official preliminary police data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. This increase came amid a general decline in hate crimes.
The first increase in hate crimes occurred in March and April last year at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic amid “negative Asian stereotypes about the pandemic,” the report said.
