Sunisa Lee of Team United States poses with her gold medal
(Picture: Getty Images)Sunisa Lee, an Olympic gold medalist, said she was pepper-sprayed in a racially motivated attack in Los Angeles, California.
Lee, who made history as the first Hmong American to compete and win gold at the Tokyo Olympics this summer, said the event happened while she was waiting for an Uber to pick her and her girlfriends up from a night out.
In an interview with Pop Sugar, the 18-year-old said that she and her friends (who were all of Asian descent) encountered a group in a car hurling derogatory names at them and urging them to “go back to where they came from.”
She also noted that one person in the car sprayed her arm with pepper spray as the car zoomed off.
“I was so mad, but there was nothing I could do or control because they skirted off,” she told the outlet.
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She further said that she “didn’t do anything to them,” because she didn’t want to get “into trouble.”
“I just let it happen.”
Lee is from St.Paul, Minnesota and her parents immigrated to the United States from Laos.
The appalling attack on her comes during a sharp increase in attacks against Asian Americans, prompting President Joe Biden to sign a bill addressing the problem earlier this year.
The legislation, which was signed in May, aimed to make hate crime reporting more attainable on a local and state level.
It also directed the Department of Justice to accelerate the review of hate crimes related to the coronavirus and authorized funding for state and local governments to conduct crime-reduction initiatives.
