75-year-old Asian girl says she fought again after being attacked in San Francisco

By Cheri Mossburg, Stella Chan and David Williams | CNN

A 75-year-old Asian woman said she struggled after being slapped in the eye on Wednesday morning in what police believed was an unprovoked attack.

“He harasses old people,” Xiao Zhen Xie said in a video that was filmed after the attack by CNN subsidiary KPIX. “So I struck.”

San Francisco police said Steven Jenkins allegedly assaulted an 83-year-old Asian man in another incident and was followed by a security guard when he beat Xie.

The guard was able to hold Jenkins until the police took him into custody.

CNN tried to contact Jenkins but he is being held in the San Francisco County Jail on $ 50,000 bail and is unavailable for comment. The San Francisco Public Defender office said it was not yet involved in the case.

Witnesses said he was in another physical altercation about 30 minutes earlier, a San Francisco police spokesman said in a statement.

The video shows a crowd of police officers, paramedics, and passers-by gathering around Xie while she is holding an ice pack to the side of her head.

She cries out and points to a man who is handcuffed to a stretcher and is being treated.

“He hit people,” you can hear Xie say in Cantonese in the video. “He bullied me, he bullied me, idiot.”

At some point, Xie gestures with a large stick at the man she is holding.

Police said 39-year-old Jenkins had been rushed to hospital with “an unrelated medical history”.

They said the woman was not responsible for his injuries.

Jenkins was later charged in the San Francisco County Jail on two charges of assault, which could result in serious bodily harm, and two charges of molesting the elderly, police said.

Both victims were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the police said.

Police have not identified the victims and said the case is still being investigated.

“Investigators are working to determine whether bias was a motivator for the incident,” said police.

Violence and discrimination against Americans of Asian descent has increased dramatically across the country, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Stop AAPI Hate group says it has received at least 3,795 firsthand complaints of violence and discrimination against Asian Americans since being persecuted last March.

The killing of eight people, most of them Asians, in three Atlanta area spas has heightened community fears.

Xie told KPIX that she was leaning against a power pole, waiting for a traffic light to change when she was hit.

She told KPIX that she found a stick and used it to defend herself. Her daughter Dong-Mei Li translated the interview.

“I do not know him. Why [did] he attacked me? “Xie told KPIX through her daughter.

Li said that her mother couldn’t see with her left eye on Wednesday night.

“Very scared and traumatized and very hurt and that eye is still bleeding,” Li said, referring to her mother.

Xie told KPIX that she has lived in San Francisco for 26 years.

“As you can see, she is extremely scared,” Xie’s grandson, John Chen, told KPIX. “She’s scared of quitting at all.”

The SFPD said it was stepping up patrols in predominantly Asian neighborhoods following an “alarming spike” in attacks on Asian Americans in recent weeks.

The CNN Wire
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