A violent hammer attack on an Asian man by another man wearing a wig and purple lipstick at a New York City subway station is being investigated as a possible hate crime by police.
NYPD officials said the 29-year-old victim was standing on the 2 train platform when he got into an argument with the suspect after they bumped into one another.
After trading words, one of the men took out a hammer and struck the victim on the head before fleeing the scene.
The victim, who remained conscious, was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where police described his condition as stable.
Police describe the suspect, who is still at large, as male, about 6-feet-2, wearing a wig, purple lipstick, blue jeans, red shoes and a red jacket, and carrying a tote bag.
The video of the attack shows the suspect pulling the hammer from their bag.
‘Why you hit me?’ the suspect yells before attacking the victim. ‘Why the f*** you hit me?’
Police said a male, about 6-feet-2, wearing a wig, purple lipstick, blue jeans, red shoes and a red jacket, attacked another man with a hammer on a subway platform
The victim, an Asian man, suffered head injuries in the hammer attack at 14th St station in New York City. He is seen in an ambulance
The victim, who remained conscious, was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where police described his condition as stable
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force has been notified of the assault, although it is not known if the attack was motivated by anti-Asian bias, police added.
New York City has however seen a huge rise in anti-Asian hate crime, with police figures showing a 343 per cent during the Covid pandemic.
As of February 27, hate crimes targeting all minorities, not just Asian-Americans, were up more than 142 percent, compared with the same period last year.
It follows a string of horrific incidents in Manhattan, including a homeless man confessing to fatally shoving an Asian woman in front of subway train at Times Square, and a 65-year-old woman who was kicked and stomped on by a man yelling anti-Asian slurs.
NYPD investigators say an incident at 14th Street station in Manhattan last night, which left an Asian man with head injuries, is being investigated as a possible hate crime
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force has been notified of the assault, although it is not known if the attack was motivated by anti-Asian bias
Police describe the suspect as male, about 6-feet-2, wearing a wig, purple lipstick, blue jeans, red shoes and a red jacket, and carrying a tote bag
It follows a string of horrific incidents in Manhattan, including a homeless man confessing to fatally shoving an Asian woman in front of subway train at Times Square, and a 65-year-old woman who was kicked and stomped on by a man yelling anti-Asian slurs
Asian Americans have experienced a 343 percent increase in hate crimes in 2021 with 133 attacks. Hispanics are also seeing a rise in attacks with eight attacks happening in 2021, compared to one in 2020
Just last week, police launched a hunt for a man suspected of going on a two-hour assault spree targeting seven Asian woman.
In February, New York City Mayor Eric Adams ousted Jessica Corey, the head of the NYPD’s hate crimes unit, which has made arrests in fewer than half of all reported incidents.
‘We were too slow in investigating [crimes] as possible hate crimes,’ Adams said Monday as he commented on Corey’s ouster. ‘I wanted a new face there, a new vision.’
During the month of February, the NYPD reported a 58.7 percent increase in total crime. The latest figures showed 9,138 incidents as opposed to 5,759 in 2021 – with double-digit surges in nearly every major category
Only 219 people were arrested for hate crimes last year, though there were 524 such complaints. In 2020, there were 265 complaints and 93 arrests
There has also been a nearly 60 per cent spike in general crime over last year.
It comes almost two weeks after New York City started its new ‘Subway Safety Plan’, a 17-page program to fight the massive spike in transit crime in the still-recovering city.
According to the latest data from the New York City Police Department, since the beginning of the year, there have been 276 instances of crime in the subway system, which represent a 65 percent increase compared to the same period in 2021.
Adams’s plan involves sending more police, mental health clinicians and social service outreach workers into the subways. Levy said Monday that a ‘phased-in’ implementation was beginning.
The plan notes that more than 1,000 homeless people who use the subways for shelter need help, not handcuffs, but says police will have a zero-tolerance policy and will crack down on sleeping, littering, smoking, doing drugs or hanging out in the system.
It calls for clearing all passengers out of trains at the ends of their lines, an approach that has waxed and waned over the years.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the subways, ‘knows that there are people in the subway system who need help and must and will be helped.
‘But they can’t stay in the subway system,’ spokesperson Aaron Donovan said.
Adams did not give any specific details and timelines on his plan’s progress last month, and given the chronic shortage of housing options that are mostly priced at an affordable rate for people who choose to live in the subway, it was unclear where those who found a home underground would go if they are evicted, if won’t be the streets.
Details on the plan’s cost or how it would be paid remain scarce.
Shelly Nortz, a deputy executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless, cautioned against ‘criminalizing homelessness and mental illness’ and suggested the city was falling back on policing strategies that had failed in the past.
However, she welcomed arrangements within the plan that call for more psychiatric inpatient beds to be made available, as well as shelters with private rooms and supportive housing, which comes with on-site social services.
In recent years, the city has veered between responding to concerns about crime in the subways and complaints about heavy-handed policing there.
The last mayor, Democrat Bill de Blasio, at times deployed more police into the system. So did Adams, just last month.
The precise number of homeless people living in the subway is unknown, but an annual survey in January 2021 shared an estimated figure at 1,300 — and that was when the subway system would be closed for four hours every night for disinfecting.
The number of homeless people in the system is believed to have increased ever since.
Prior to the pandemic, 1,700 people were living in the subway in January 2020.