BY ROSE ADAMS
Cops have cuffed two
13-year-old boys for allegedly
slapping an 89-year-old
woman in Bensonhurst and
setting her on fi re in a July attack
that outraged residents
across the city, police said.
Police arrested one of the
suspects on Sept. 4 and the
other on Sept. 8. Both were
charged with assault in the
third degree, a Class A misdemeanor.
Cops also apprehended a
12-year-old boy who was later
released, according to police
records.
The arrests come nearly
two months after the defendants
allegedly attacked the
89-year-old Asian woman on
77th Street and 16th Avenue,
slapping her in the face and
setting the back of her shirt on
fi re, according to police. The
woman was able to extinguish
the fl ames by putting her
hair up and rubbing her back
against a wall, she told ABC7.
The attackers, whom she had
never seen, ran away without
saying a word to her, the victim
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COURIER L 14 IFE, SEPT. 18-24, 2020
said.
Police did not classify the
attack a hate crime because of
a lack of evidence regarding
the attackers’ motives, since
the assailants did not say racial
slurs or exhibit any other
obvious signs of anti-Asian
prejudice, authorities said.
But locals charged that
the randomness of the attack
and the assailants’ choice to
obscure their faces suggest
the assault was a raciallymotivated
— especially after
an uptick in crimes against
Asian-Americans since the
start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Police said it wasn’t
a hate crime because there
were no racial slurs that were
said,” said William Lex Ham,
a Queens-based actor. “The
woman doesn’t even speak
English, so how could she
know? This was an unprovoked
attack.”
Lex Ham and Chinese-
American rapper China Mac
led a large march through
Bensonhurst two weeks following
the assault, where hundreds
of protesters gathered to
show their support for the elderly
woman and urge police
to investigate the attack as a
hate crime.
“I said to myself, ‘This is
too close to home, and enough
is enough, and I have to do
something about this,’” China
Mac, a Brooklyn-born rapper,
told Brooklyn Paper. “We have
to go into Brooklyn and take a
stance and make people uncomfortable.”
Two weeks after the march,
Two teens have been arrested for allegedly slapping an 89-year-old
woman and setting her on fi re in July. NYPD
the Police Department created
the Asian Hate Crime Task
Force, staffed with 24 Asian offi
cers who speak one language
other than English. The force
aims to better communicate
with Asian-Americans who
are hesitant to speak to police
because of cultural or language
barriers, said Chief of
Detectives Rodney Harrison.
A spokeswoman for the
NYPD did not elaborate on
how investigators located and
apprehended the young suspects,
but said that the new
task force likely played a role
in their arrests.
The defendants will be tried
in Family Court, a spokesman
from New York Court
Administration said. Neither
has been charged with a hate
crime.
Teens arrested for setting
89-year-old Asian woman
on fi re in Bensonhurst
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