A 28-year-old suspect was detained in a series of random strikes targeting Asians from the Chinatown area of Oakland, California, including a brazen street attack of a 91-year-old guy, authorities said.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley declared the arrest of Yahya Muslim during a news conference with Oakland's recently appointed police chief LeRonne Armstrong.
The arrest came Monday just as two notable Asian actors, Daniel Wu and"Hawaii Five-O" star Daniel Dae Kim, were put to put up a $25,000 reward in the quest for the serial assault suspect.
The road attacks in Oakland occurred amid an alarming variety of assaults on Asian people throughout the nation, which anti-hate urges state stem from Asians being blamed to its coronavirus.
"And so Asians across-the-board have been targeted, being pushed, assaulted, spat on.
A motive in the Oakland Chinatown strikes hasn't yet been released.
One of those Jan. 31 attacks was around the 91-year-old Asian man and was caught on video surveillance. The footage, that went viral on social media, revealed the man walking on a Chinatown sidewalk in broad daylight when a suspect, that O'Malley alleged was Muslim, walked up behind him and pushed him into the floor as witnesses watched in terror.
O'Malley said among those strikes Muslim allegedly dedicated on Jan. 1 was on the 91-year-old man and was captured on surveillance video. The footage, which had been published on societal media from the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce and has since gone viral, and showed the victim, whose name was not published, walking on a Chinatown sidewalk in broad daylight when the supposed attacker walked him up and pushed him into the ground.
The prosecutor alleged that on the same day, Muslim attacked two other people in Chinatown, a 60-year-old man and also a 55-year-old woman, in similar fashion.
"We've charged him with three counts of assault that involve three individual victims," O'Malley said.
Muslim has also been charged with numerous counts of elder abuse stemming from the Chinatown attacks.
He's being held at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, on $85,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, according to internet jail records. It was unclear Tuesday morning when Muslim has hired an attorney or would be appointed a public defender.
"We recognize a few in our neighborhood come to Chinatown to target people. We all know they aim our older. They come because they believe our community won't report it to authorities," said Armstrong, who was sworn in on Monday as Oakland's new police chief. "We're excited we've already transitioned into new strategies to make Chinatown a safer community."
Armstrong added,"We're sending a message to people that perpetrate crime in this city that we will pursue you and we'll detain you and it's not okay for things like that to occur in our community."
Carl Chan, president of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, told ABC San Francisco station KGO-TV he has accumulated more than 20 episode reports lately and movies in Chinatown of little companies getting robbed and owners and customers assaulted.
In March since the COVID-19 virus was only starting to sweep the planet, national law enforcement officials cautioned of an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans since the coronavirus disaster continued to rise.
"The FBI assesses hate crime incidents against Asian Americans probably will surge across the United States, as a result of spread of coronavirus disorder... threatening Asian American communities," according to the intelligence report, compiled from the FBI's Houston office and spread to local law enforcement agencies throughout the country. "The FBI causes this evaluation based on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations."
