An older woman, who got attacked on San Francisco market street Wednesday, in the recent wave of Asian targeted hate attacks in the bay area- turned the tables by fighting back with the attacker leaving him with injuries requiring him to visit the hospital.
As she said in an interview with CBS from her senior retirement home in “Very traumatized, very scared and this eye is still bleeding,” translated by her daughter, Dong-Mei Li. She also said, “The right eye still cannot see anything and (is) still bleeding, and we have something to absorb the bleeding.”
Surrounded by her family, the 76-year-old, who has lived in San Francisco for 26 years, said she was agitated and the attack was not instigated. Her immediate instinct was to strike back. She said she was waiting for a traffic light when the suspect suddenly hit her left eye.
Her mother held an ice pack to her face during the attack. Police said the assailant and victim were taken to the hospital for treatment.
Immediately, her instincts kicked in. While she suffered injuries and required medical attention, her attacker ended up on a stretcher. Li said: “She found the stick around the area and struck back.”
Xie’s grandson, John Chen, told CBS San Francisco that her grandmother “is terrified. She’s even terrified of going out.”
CBS San Francisco athletic director Dennis O’Donnell arrived at the scene during his morning run.
“There was a guy on a stretcher and a frustrated, angry woman with a stick in her hand,” O’Donnell said. “From what I could see, she wanted more of the guy on the stretcher, and the police were holding her.”
Witnesses told the station they saw the woman hitting her attacker.
In the video taken at the scene, the suspect is handcuffed to a stretcher with a bloody face. The sobbing victim appears to scold him and greet him with what appears to be a wooden board as he is carried away.
“Are you crazy? Why did you hit me?” the woman said in Chinese.
She then turned to the crowd that had gathered and exclaimed, “That bum, he hit me,” picking up the stick she was holding and sobbing. “That bum hit me,” she repeated.
Officers also said there was a second victim earlier, an 83-year-old Asian man.
A 39-year-old man is being investigated for both attacks, and police say they are trying to determine whether bias was a factor.
The family opened a GoFundMe account to cover medical costs.
The racist hate crimes against Asian American is rising in the USA these days, and hashtags like #asianlivesmatter are trending in Twitter since few days with millions of tweets so far.
