Police in New York are searching for a woman who allegedly made anti-Asian remarks while pepper-spraying four people on Saturday.
In a video provided to USA TODAY by the NYPD, the unidentified woman can be seen using pepper spray as she speaks to the victims. The video does not contain any audio.
The woman approached four Asian women, knocked a cell phone out of one of their hands and pepper sprayed all four of them as she made xenophobic comments, according an NYPD statement.
The women reported feeling burning in their eyes and face following the alleged assault and were treated on-scene by EMS according to the NYPD. The incident is being investigated by the NYPD’s hate crimes task force.
Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that tracks hate incidents against Asian Americans in the United States, saw a 15% increase in Asian hate incidents in 2021 compared to 2020.
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Nearly 11,000 anti-Asian incidents occurred between March 2020 and December 2021, according to Stop AAPI Hate’s national report, which was released in March. Verbal harassment made up the largest percentage of reports filed, at 63%, according to the report.
Stop AAPI Hate says nearly half of the incidents took place in public places and almost a third of them occurred in a public street, as did Saturday’s incident, according to
Asian women were the most common victims of hate incidents in the report, according to Stop AAPI Hate.