NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A man poured an unknown liquid on an Asian woman and told her to go “back to China” in a hate crime attack in midtown Manhattan on Monday, according to a report.
The 41-year-old woman was bending down to pick up packages near West 37th Street and 8th Avenue around 7 p.m. on Monday when the man approached her and poured the liquid “on her neck and on her packages,” the NYPD told the Daily News.
“Go back to China,” the man said at some point during the attack, according to the outlet.
The woman wasn’t physically injured during the incident, the outlet reported. The NYPD’s Asian Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the attack.
The NYPD stepped up security in New York City’s Asian-American communities on Tuesday after a gunman shot and killed eight people at several massage parlors in the Atlanta area.
Many of the victims were of Asian descent, the Associated Press reported.
The Atlanta attack came amid a spike in anti-Asian violence in the U.S. Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday said New Yorkers “all need to understand the pain that Asian Americans are going through right now in this city and all over the country.”
“There is today a major deployment of NYPD counterterrorism forces in communities around the city, including some of the most prominent Asian communities in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn,” he said. “And wherever we get any reports of concern, we’re going to make sure to have a real strong presence.”