An elderly woman randomly attacked on a California street fought back so ferociously she sent her assailant to hospital.
Xiao Zhen Xie told CBS she was waiting at a traffic light in San Francisco when a man approached her and punched her in the eye.
Shocked and frightened, the 70-year-old woman picked up a nearby stick and fought back.
Video from the scene posted on Twitter shows a distressed Xie clutching what appears to be an ice pack to her bloodied face as a man is wheeled away handcuffed to a stretcher.
Officers also say there was a second victim earlier, an 83-year-old Asian man. A 39-year-old man is being investigated for both attacks, and police say they’re trying to determine if racism was a factor.
It follows a slew of anti-Asian hate crimes in the US. On Friday, US congress held a hearing to investigate a spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans, which rose by 149 percent in 2020 in 16 major cities compared with 2019, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
It comes two days after the fatal shootings of six Asian women and two others at massage parlours in Georgia.
