US mother-killer is charged over Asian hate crime
People attend an Asian American anti-violence press conference outside the building where a 65-year-old Asian woman was attacked in New York on Tuesday.
A parolee convicted of killing his mother nearly two decades ago was arrested on charges including felony assault as a hate crime for attacking an Asian American woman near New York City’s Times Square.
Police said Brandon Elliot, 38, is the man seen on video kicking and stomping the woman on Monday. They said Elliot was living at a hotel that serves as a homeless shelter a few blocks from the scene of the attack.
Elliot was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx in 2002, when he was 19. He was released from prison in 2019 and is on lifetime parole.
He faces charges of assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault in Monday’s attack, police said.
It wasn’t immediately known whether he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
The victim was identified as Vilma Kari, a 65-year-old woman who immigrated from the Philippines, her daughter told The New York Times.
Kari was walking to church in midtown Manhattan when police said a man kicked her in the stomach, knocked her to the ground, stomped on her face, shouted anti-Asian slurs and told her: “you don’t belong here!” before casually walking away.
She was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday after being treated for serious injuries, a hospital spokesperson said.
The attack was among the latest in a national spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, and happened just weeks after a mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent.
The surge in violence has been linked in part to misplaced blame for the coronavirus pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s use of racially charged terms such as the “Chinese virus.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called Monday’s attack “absolutely disgusting and outrageous.”
He said it was “absolutely unacceptable” that bystanders did not intervene.
“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to help your fellow New Yorker,” de Blasio said on Tuesday.
The attack happened late Monday morning outside a luxury apartment building two blocks from Times Square.
Two workers inside the building who appeared to be security guards were seen on surveillance video witnessing the attack but failing to come to the woman’s aid. One of them was seen closing the building door as the woman was on the ground.
The attacker was able to casually walk away while onlookers watched.
The building’s management company said they were suspended pending an investigation.
Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang said the victim “could easily have been my mother.” He too criticized the bystanders, saying their inaction was “exactly the opposite of what we need here in New York City.”
This year in New York City, there have been 33 hate crimes with an Asian victim as of Sunday, police said.
There were 11 such attacks by the same time last year.
On Friday, in the same neighborhood as Monday’s attack, a 65-year-old Asian American woman was accosted by a man waving an unknown object and shouting anti-Asian insults. A 48-year-old man was arrested the next day and charged with menacing.
