They come on the heels of an alleged attack on the subway on Friday, in which an eyewitness said the Asian victim was beaten for who he was.
One of Sunday’s alleged attacks left a 54-year-old Asian woman hospitalized, a police spokesman said. She was approached in the Lower East Side by a man who hit her in the face with a metal object, police said.
38-year-old Elias Guerrero has since been arrested and provisionally charged with assault as a hate crime, the NYPD spokesman said. Guerrero has not been formally charged by the prosecutor and it is unclear whether prosecutors will prosecute a hate crime charge.
In another incident, a woman reportedly grabbed a 41-year-old Asian woman from behind and threw her on the ground, yelling at her in Spanish, a police spokesman said.
Police arrested 37-year-old Patricia Melendez and charged her with assault, disorderly conduct and intimidation. The incident is being investigated as a possible “bias” crime, a NYPD spokesman said.
It is unclear whether Guerrero or Melendez have a lawyer. CNN’s attempts to contact them or their families have failed.
The NYPD said it is investigating a third incident in which a 37-year-old woman was on her way to an anti-Asian violence protest when a man – who has not yet been identified – allegedly took her protest sign and, after attempting to put it in a trash can. to place it, threw it on the ground and stomped on it.
An NYPD release said that when the woman asked the man why he did so, he reportedly punched her in the face twice and fled.
Subway attack reportedly contained words of hatred
The three incidents, according to authorities, came after an attack on Friday in which a 68-year-old Asian man was hit on a subway in an unprovoked attack.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the attacker hit the man so hard that the victim lost consciousness and suffered a head tear that required medical treatment.
According to the NYPD, the victim is in a critical but stable condition.
Marc Mathieu is charged with second-degree assault and was charged Monday, according to the prosecutor’s office. While Detective Hubert Reyes said Mathieu was provisionally charged with “assault as a hate crime,” prosecutors are still investigating whether the case is a hate crime, the prosecutor’s office says.
CNN reached out to Mathieu’s attorney, James McQueeney, for comment.
Witness George Okrepkie told CNN he “still can’t get over it.”
“I’m a 9/11 survivor … I’ve been through hard times,” he said. “I’ve been working in the city for 30 years. I’ve seen people robbed, beaten up, but most of them are monetary (nature) or passionate crimes. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone attack someone for whom they goods. “
Witness is shocked by attacks
Okrepkie said the victim, the attacker, and he were the only people on the subway. Okrepie was sitting opposite the victim when the attacker invented a rolled up object, called the victim a “m * therf ** king Chinese,” and hit him repeatedly in the head, the witness said.
“I just took care of the gentleman, who was in shock and, as it turned out, was in his late sixties, but told me he was 170 years old,” said Okrepkie. “He didn’t know where he was, so I took off my scarf and made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.”
After treating the man’s wounds, Okrepkie took pictures of the bloody man before EMTs came to take care of him.
“I took the two pictures because it’s a current event right now and people don’t think how real it is,” he said. “These photos showed exactly what was going on.”
Okrepkie said he later learned that the man is Sri Lankan, but regardless of the man’s specific ethnicity, he said it was a sad comment on a diaspora that he said was “part of what (New York City) does” .
“I’m just afraid that, like a common man walking down the street and mentioning things they aren’t – ‘Kung Flu, Chinese virus’ – people are starting to act on the fringes,” he said. “That’s what you get (as a result).
“I’m scared,” said Okrepkie. “If I were Asian I would be scared.”
Mayor condemns attacks on Asian Americans
Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference Monday that the NYPD presence in Asian communities across the city will continue to increase.
De Blasio called the incidents “unacceptable” and encouraged New Yorkers to report them.
“The way to defeat hate is to acknowledge and report it,” de Blasio said.
According to California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, San Bernardino, anti-Asian hate crimes more than doubled during the pandemic.
The alleged incidents follow last week’s shootings in the Atlanta area in three spas and salons. Eight people were killed in the shooting, six of whom were Asian American women.
CNN’s Laura Ly and Mirna Alsharif contributed to this report.