Video footage released by police shows the suspect using his elbow to strike the victim in the face while the two were outside a storefront in the neighborhood of Koreatown on Monday. The “unprovoked” attack, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, resulted in the victim falling to the ground, appearing to be unconscious in the video.
Manju Kulkarni, the co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told CNN her organization is advocating for two bills in the California legislature to stop public harassment.
“We don’t know the motivations behind this specific targeting of an Asian American, but we do know how real the problem of anti-AAPI hate is — not only in violent incidents like these but in the many more public harassment moments where racial and ethnic slurs are shouted at AAPIs just trying to go about their lives,” Kulkarni said.
