A suspect has been charged in conjunction with the attack on an elderly Asian woman that went viral after video showed security guards at a nearby apartment complex ignoring her plight.
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The brutality of the seemingly random altercation shocked the nation, as did the fact that multiple bystanders watched the whole thing without lifting a finger to help. Calls for the guards to lose their jobs resulted in their suspension and a firm denouncement of anti-Asian violence from the company that employed them, and efforts turned fully towards finding the man who committed the attack in the first place.
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38-year-old Brandon Elliot was ultimately identified as the man in the footage, shown kicking and stomping on 65-year-old Vilma Kari in New York City while she was on her way to church.
WANTED in connection to an assault. On Monday, March 29th at 11:40 AM, at 360 West 43rd St, a female, 65, was approached by an unidentified male who punched and kicked her about the body and made anti-Asian statements. Have Info? Call or DM
1-800-577-TIPS. Up to $2500 reward. pic.twitter.com/6gb5NDCZCA
— NYPD Crime Stoppers (@NYPDTips) March 30, 2021
Word of his arrest broke on Tuesday evening, along with the report that Elliot was released from prison in 2019 after being convicted of stabbing his own mother to death in the Bronx back in 2002. He was out on lifetime parole and had been living in a homeless shelter in Times Square, according to the NYPD.
“He told me he was [a] diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic,” a man who claims to have previously been at a different shelter with Elliot told the New York Post. “He’s quiet. He doesn’t talk much. He is really paranoid. He has mental issues.”
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Police offered a $2500 reward for information and said they received a number of helpful tips that resulted in Elliot’s arrest. He has been charged with felony assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime, assault, and attempted assault, as he allegedly hurled racial insults during the attack.
The attack on Kari was one of a growing number of anti-Asian attacks across the United States over the past year, believed to have brought on in part by leaders focusing on blaming China for COVID-19.
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New York City has seen over 30 anti-Asian hate crimes so far this year alone, and 3800 incidents of discrimination were reported across the country between March 19, 2020 and the end of February this year. Roughly 421 of those incidents involved physical assault.
*First Published: March 31, 2021, 7:23 am
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