A New York City man accused of slashing an Asian woman with a box cutter has been arrested and charged with a hate crime.
Anthony Evans, 30, was taken into custody on Tuesday, after security footage captured him allegedly attacking a 59-year-old seamstress near Manhattan’s Times Square on Sunday morning.
The video shows Evans, who has been charged with a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon, allegedly slicing the unnamed victim from behind as she pulls a shopping cart.
Evans is set to be arraigned in Manhattan court, and does not appear to have legal representation yet.
The woman, who was taken to Bellevue hospital with a deep cut on her wrist and hand, told ABC7 the attack was unprovoked, and may have something to do with her race.
"No nothing, no conversation, no nothing," she said. "We don’t know each other. No argue, nothing. Why you do this?"
She regularly takes a nearby subway stop, and has been afraid to leave the house since the suspected hate attack.
“My mom is happy an arrest has been made and that the perpetrator is off the streets,” the victim’s daughter, who asked to remain anonymous, told The New York Post.
Evans has been arrested more than 30 times for offenses including robbery, possession of a weapon, and turnstile jumping, according to the Post.
The attack is the latest suspected hate crime targeting Asian-Americans.
Hate crimes are up in New York City by more than 13 per cent in general, according to NYPD statistics, and have quadrupled against Asians.
“The community feels a lot of anger, as well as fear, every time they leave the house,” Assemblymember Ron Kim of Queens told Politico in March.
Mayor Eric Adams, a former New York City police officer who campaigned on his public safety bona fides, has been faulted for not doing more to stop anti-Asian hate.
Earlier this year, he replaced the head of the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force and urged prosecutors not to offer plea deals to those accused of hate crimes.
Nationally, anti-Asian hate crimes rose by nearly 340 per cent, according to an analysis from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
