An Asian American veteran was allegedly assaulted during a trip to the grocery store in San Francisco in what police suspect is another hate crime against the Asian American community.
Ron Tuason, 56, a former combat engineer, said on March 13, a man uttered racial insults before punching him multiple times, sending him to the ground. Tuason is of Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish descent.
Tuason, who uses a cane to walk, was carrying his groceries and sporting a veteran’s hat when the alleged assault happened.
“When he noticed me, he got aggressive and charged across the street, ‘Go back where you came from. You caused this problem.’ He was referring to COVID,” Tuason told KPIX 5.
Tuason recalled the man asking, “Do you want to get hurt? You’re not a veteran. I’m a veteran.”
Tuason tried to take a video of the incident with his phone, but it was knocked out of his hand during the scuffle.
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“I had one arm out, my left arm, but he sidestepped that and came in from the outside, and he waylaid me, and he laid me out right here, and it was very swollen,” Tuason continued. “There was a chain-link fence, and I hit the steel post, and I was followed up with two lefts and a knee.”
San Francisco Police Department authorities apprehended 53-year-old Victor Brown and charged him with assault, hate crime battery, resisting arrest, and possession of narcotic paraphernalia in connection to the incident.
“Because of the color of my skin, and because I like to wear a hat that says I served, that people who are minorities who are often neglected, overlooked invisible, we served,” Tuason said.
The San Francisco Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
A 79-year-old Asian woman pummeled an attacker who punched her without provocation earlier in March. The woman, who has not been publicly named, allegedly beat an unidentified man until he was bloodied.
Video of the incident showed a crowd of people gathered around the woman as she held an ice pack to a gash on her face and yelled in Chinese at the suspected attacker, who was handcuffed to a stretcher.
Protests have erupted throughout the country following the apprehension of Robert Aaron Long, 21, who was arrested March 16 after allegedly opening fire at three different massage parlors, killing eight in the Atlanta area.
He’s suspected of killing at least four people and injuring another at the Young’s Asian Massage Parlor before gunning down four more at the Gold Spa and Aroma Therapy Spa, which were across the street from one another just south of Interstate 85.
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It was initially believed that Long had a hate motive as most of the victims were of Asian descent; however, authorities have not made the connection and have instead insisted the 21-year-old was suffering from sex addiction.
The suspect allegedly wanted to “eliminate” temptation, adding further that he might have visited some of the locations in the past, police said.
Hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have been on the rise since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and California is one of the epicenters of the violence.
