Suspect arrested in attack on Chinese American man in NYC
This Friday, April 23, 2021 image from surveillance video made available by the New York City Police Department shows an unidentified individual police who are seeking after a 61-year-old Asian man was attacked in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York.[NYPD via AP]
A man was arrested Tuesday in an assault on a Chinese American man who was kicked repeatedly in the head in East Harlem, police said.
Jarrod Powell was charged with two counts of felony assault in Friday’s attack on 61-year-old Yao Pan Ma, police said. It wasn’t clear if Powell, 49, had an attorney who could comment on the charges.
Ma was collecting cans when he was attacked from behind, knocked to the ground and kicked in the head. He was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he remained in a coma on Tuesday, officials said.
The police department’s hate crimes task force was investigating the attack, which appeared to be among the latest in a troubling rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York and around the country.
Surveillance video showing the attacker kicking Ma and stomping on him, echoing last month’s assault near Times Square in which a Filipina American woman was knocked to the ground and stomped on. A parolee convicted of killing his mother nearly two decades ago was arrested in that attack.
Elected officials and community advocates planned a news conference later Tuesday to announce the creation of a trust fund to assist Ma’s family.