Madeline Barker Florida woman aka New York Karen pepper sprays four Asian women charged with hate crime after demanding women go back to where they come from before attacking them with pepper spray. Caught on video.
A woman who was filmed spewing racial hate along with pepper spraying four Asian women at a Manhattan street last week was arraigned and charged with a hate crime Sunday, after video of the incident went viral.
Madeline Barker, 47, was caught on camera hurling racial insults at the victims, such as ‘Go back to where you came from. Go back to your country!’ and ‘you don’t belong here,’ during the June 10 altercation.
Barker, a resident of Merritt Island, Florida, was ruled a possible flight risk at her first court appearance Saturday in Manhattan, and ordered held on $20,000 bail.
Prosecutors lobbied for the judge to declare the Florida resident a flight risk, who hadn’t turned herself in and was only caught after an eyewitness recognized her on the street, according to the nypost.
Barker’s Legal Aid Counsel argued that the media coverage of the incident had ‘amplified’ the case.
Anti-Asian violence ongoing in the U.S.
She faces charges of assault as a hate crime, with bail set at $20,000 cash, $20,000 partially secure bond.
The incident, which transpired in a public plaza in the Meatpacking District, subsequently sparked a search for the then-unidentified woman – dubbed ‘Karen’ on social media.
Karen is a pejorative term often used to describe white women seeking to display racial superiority over their victims and has been an ongoing factor across the U.S, especially in recent years and post pandemic.
Last week’s episode incident, which left one victim ‘unable to open her eyes,’ comes amid a rash of anti-Asian violence in NYC and ongoing in the U.S.
Hate crimes have been on the rise in New York City and across the country, with the NYPD claiming a 96 percent increase in hate crimes in 2021, with 133 Asian Americans facing horrific and hazardous discrimination in the city. According to data, there were 30 reported instances in 2020, compared to 133 the previous year, a 343 percent increase.
Welcome to a brave new America…
