The alleged assailant who stabbed an Asian American man in the back during an unprovoked attack on Thursday night has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime, police said.
The suspect, identified as 23-year-old Salman Muflihi, is accused of stabbing the victim in the torso as the two passed each other in an alley near Baxter and Worth streets at 6:20 p.m.
Muflihi reportedly turned himself in shortly after the alleged ambush, telling a security guard outside the Manhattan District Attorney's building: "I just stabbed someone. Where are the police at?"
He later said that he stabbed the 36-year-old man because he didn't like the way he looked at him, WABC 7 reported.
The incident comes amid a string of violent attacks on Asian American New Yorkers that have concerned communities and public officials.
While police initially said that Thursday's stabbing was not a hate crime, the charges were upgraded on Friday afternoon to include hate crime attempted murder and hate crime assault, according to an NYPD spokesperson.
Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou told Gothamist that the upgrade came as a result of Muflihi's prior convictions, which included an attack on an Asian American man last month. The victim, whose name has not been released, remains in critical condition, and is currently sedated and unable to speak, according to Niou. He is expected to survive.
"The community is feeling hurt, fear and anger," Niou said. "A lot of my constituents are feeling all three of these emotions at once."
Earlier this week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the NYPD's Asian Hate Crime Task Force would be stepping up its investigations into anti-Asian bias incidents, following viral footage of a daylight attack on an Asian woman in the Flushing section of Queens.
A recent report from the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY) found that hate incidents directed at East Asian has "skyrocketed" in the last year — in part due to racism stemming from COVID-19.
On Wednesday, Jason Wang, the CEO of Xi'an Famous Foods, told the Times that at least two of his workers have been punched while commuting to and from work since the pandemic began. The unrelated assaults prompted him to begin closing locations earlier so employees can get home safely, he said.
There were 30 reported anti-Asian hate crime and bias incidents last year, up from just 1 in 2019, according to city data. There were more than 200 bias incidents — which included hostile expressions that may not be criminal — against Asian Americans between February to December of last year, compared to 30 in the previous year.
Members of the community say that the true number of attacks is much higher, noting that many incidents are never reported, and few are classified as hate crimes.
"There was a lot of erasure of the hate crimes that were happening in the last year," Niou added. "Many folks in our community still don’t feel safe reporting and we have to do better to make resources accessible. We have a lot of work to do."
