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A Florida woman faces charges of hate crimes after authorities say she rebuked a group of women with anti-Asian comments and spray-painted them in New York City last week.
The New York City Police Department announced Friday that it had arrested Madeline Barker, 47, after the incident, which was partially captured on video.
The victims told ABC7 New York that they were walking through the Meatpacking District of Manhattan around 6 pm on June 11 when a woman accused them of harassing her. The victims said they had no previous interactions with the woman, but tried to calm her down by apologizing. In response, the assailant pulled out a can of pepper spray and shouted at them, “Come back where you came from, you’re not here,” a victim told ABC7.
He sprayed four women with a pepper solution and called on an Asian man walking down the sidewalk to take the women “back to where you came from,” with an insult, a police spokesman told CNN.
Victims declined medical attention at the scene, police said.
The video from the New York Post shows a woman, dressed in bright fuchsia, running after a woman and spraying pepper on her back as she walks away.
New York City Police Hate Crimes Task Force Releases Photos of Fuchsia Woman Last week, he later tweeted that he had made an arrest “thanks to the help of everyday New Yorkers.”
Barker, of Merritt Island, Florida, was tried on Saturday on three counts of assault as a hate crime, one of attempted assault as a hate crime and four counts of aggravated harassment, according to a criminal complaint. filed by the Manhattan District Attorney. Office. When a still image of the video was shown, Barker admitted that she was the woman in the incident, according to the complaint.
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Barker was arrested on $ 20,000 bail Sunday afternoon, according to prison records, and her next court appearance was scheduled for Thursday.
His public defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon.
Hate crimes against Asian Americans have risen sharply since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. In New York, anti-Asian hate crimes rose 357 percent between 2020 and 2021, according to the NYPD.
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Despite legislative efforts to intensify hate crime investigations, violence has not abated in 2022. This year, two notorious killings of Asian-American women in New York City have shaken Asian communities there.
In January, 40-year-old Michelle Alyssa Go was pushed onto the subway tracks at Times Square Station.
In February, a man chased Christina Yuna Lee, 35, to his Manhattan apartment and stabbed her to death.
Later that month, supposedly, a man assaulted seven Asian women in two hours along a 30-block stretch of Manhattan. He was charged with 13 hate crimes.
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K-pop group BTS appeared at the White House last month to raise awareness about the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, which have been targeted especially at women and the elderly.
Amanda Nguyen, CEO of the nonprofit civil rights organization Rise, told the Washington Post Live in March that “the intersection of race and gender is one we can’t overlook.”
“Unfortunately, these acts of violence that have been directed at the Asian American community, especially women, have existed before the covid,” she said. “The pandemic absolutely aggravated these problems, especially when we had leaders saying things like ‘China virus’ or ‘China flu’.”
Rise founder and CEO Amanda Nguyen joins Washington Post Live (video: The Washington Post)