New York Karen pepper sprays four Asian women in possible hate crime after demanding women go back to where they come from before attacking them. Caught on video.
Who is she? A woman dressed in fuchsia pink, since described as New York Karen has caused outcry after she was filmed pepper spraying four Asian women over the weekend in what the NYPD say may be yet another episode of hate crime towards Asians in America.
The unfolding episode, caught by one of the victims, showed the hate spewing woman woman threatening the four women, all in their 20s, before pepper-spraying them.
Police said they are looking into the incident and are currently treating it as a hate crime incident. As of Wednesday, no arrests had been made. According to the victims, the unidentified Karen allegedly launched into a racial diatribe as she sprayed the Asian women with pepper spray according to ABC7.
The incident happened near 14th Street and Ninth Avenue in Chelsea around 6 pm on Saturday when the unidentified white woman started an argument with the four Asian women. According to the authorities, filmed video shows the woman brandishing pepper spray and demanding the women at the other end of a folding table to ‘move.’
The woman also told the Asian women to ‘go back to where you came from, go back to your country,’ a police spokesperson told Patch.
Florida woman charged with hate crime pepper spraying four Asian women: You don’t belong here!
Go back where you came from! Go back to your country!’
‘I thought I would be safe in the middle of Chelsea, in the middle of the day, with so many people around,’ Nicole Chung, 24, one of the four victims of the pepper spray attack told the nypost. ‘But it is not safe going out in the city as an Asian person. … It’s scary in New York,‘ she added.
Chung, who is a graphic designer, said along with the three female friends, a 24-year-old and and two 25-year-old, the group had left the L.E.A.F flower show in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District when they realized one of them had misplaced a bag in the area.
They stopped for around 30 seconds and started looking for the misplaced item and attempting to make their bearings, when the woman suddenly appeared and started screaming at them. She said, ‘You are harassing me,’ Chung recounted.
‘And we were like, ‘We’re not harassing you, we’re trying to work out which direction to walk.’
‘She said ‘I know what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to harass me,’ Chung recalled. ‘I responded, ‘We’re not trying to bother you, but if you want us to move, you can ask nicely.’
Chung told the nypost that one of her friends even apologized to her but she was in no mood to listen. Instead, she started spewing racial slurs. ‘You’re harassing me! Go back where you came from! Go back to your country!’ NY Karen purportedly screamed.
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.
Hate crimes a rising bias crime in NYC
Chung stated that she was born in the United States and raised in the city. Meanwhile Karen pepper-sprayed the four women before fleeing north on Ninth Avenue, cops said.
‘When she sprayed, we were in a state of shock, like, ‘What the hell just happened?” Chung recalled. ‘She hit me in the eyes with the pepper spray, which started burning immediately. It felt like someone was pouring bleach in my eyes.’
Passers-by jumped in to assist her, splashing water in her eyes, but the pain only worsened. For 30 minutes, Chung couldn’t see.
After the incident, one of the victims claimed she received a message from someone else who had supposedly run into the same woman earlier in the day, claiming Karen had pepper-sprayed three others, including a 13-year-old child.
Police are treating the incident as hate crime and are looking for the unidentified Karen. According to authorities, the suspect is in her 50s, stands 5 feet 3 inches tall, and weighs 120 pounds.
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.
Bias crimes against Asians accounted for 25 percent of all hate crime reports in NYC last year, according to the NYPD figures.
