A shirtless attacker told an Asian man to go back to his country, then bit his hand so hard that part of his fingertip severed, police said.
The unprovoked beating occurred near West 43rd Street and 11th Avenue just before 10 a.m. on Tuesday. According to police, the assailant approached the 48-year-old Asian man, punched him in the face, and told him to "go back to your country."
After punching him several more times, he then bit the man's two fingers, "causing the middle finger tip to be severed," the NYPD said in a tweet.
The victim, who remains hospitalized, is a driver from Long Island who was in the area to pick up a customer, according to WABC 7.
A spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed that police are investigating the incident as a hate crime, and had yet to arrest the perpetrator.
Hate crimes against Asian New Yorkers have soared this year, mirroring a nationwide trend.
One of the most notorious attacks occurred just two blocks from the site of Tuesday's incident, in which a 65-year-old Filipino woman was stomped on and called racist slurs by a stranger in March. Earlier this month, a hammer-wielding man allegedly attacked a 31-year-old Asian woman in roughly the same vicinity.
A spokesperson for the NYPD had no information about the apparent concentration of bias incidents.
In a statement, Governor Andrew Cuomo directed the state's Hate Crimes Task Force to assist in the investigation.
"In what has now become an alarming, disgusting pattern, we have learned that yet another Asian American was attacked violently in Manhattan," Cuomo said. "This needs to end."
