The 15-year-old suspect was charged with second-degree assault.
A 15-year-old was arrested for allegedly assaulting an Asian couple in a videotaped attack in Washington state.
The Tacoma Police Department announced on Friday that a male teenager was arrested and charged with second-degree assault in connection with the attack on a Korean-American couple on November 19, 2020.
The video of the attack, in which the teenager appears to punch a 56-year-old Asian man, repeatedly while the woman with him looks frantic, has recently circulated on social media. The suspect was 14 at the time, according to local ABC affiliate KOMO.
The arrest comes amid a wave of growing attacks against Americans of Asian descent.
Police said they received a report on the video of the attack on March 31 and asked the public for information about the incident.
On Thursday, a family member of the victims of the video contacted the police, officials said.
The victims were unaware that the video of the assault was recorded, police said.
Investigators used the video to identify the suspect and realized that he was due to appear on Friday for a detention review hearing on an unrelated theft charge and the police took him into custody in court, the police told KOMO.
The attack on the Asian couple was not immediately classified as a hate crime. The suspect was not identified because he is a minor.
From March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021, there were more than 3,795 hate incidents, including verbal harassment and physical assault, against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States, reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a non-profit organization that tracks such incidents.
On March 16, a sniper killed eight people, including six Asian women, in three separate shootings at spas in the Atlanta area.
The attack, and other acts of violence against the Asian community, have sparked demonstrations in dozens of US cities in recent weeks, calling for an end to anti-Asian violence.