A U.S. Army veteran is now speaking out after he was the victim of an unprovoked racist attack in San Francisco.
Ron Tuason, 56, tells KPIX-5 that he was assaulted on March 13 on his way home from the grocery store.
He said he was waiting at a bus stop in the Ingleside District and wearing a veterans’ cap when a man across the street spotted the hat and started yelling racist insults.
"When he noticed me he got aggressive and charged across the street, ‘Go back where you came from, you caused this problem.' He was referring to COVID. And, ‘Do you want to get hurt? You’re not a veteran, I’m a veteran,'" he told KPIX-5.
Tuason is of Chinese, Filipino and Spanish descent and served as a combat engineer in Louisiana and Germany in the 1980s.
He said the man hit him in the face several times before he was knocked into a fence and fell to the ground.
San Francisco Police have arrested a suspect, Victor Brown.
He has been charged with assault and battery with a hate crime enhancement.
"Because of the color of my skin, and because I like to wear a hat that says I served - that people who are minorities that are often neglected, overlooked, invisible - we served," said Tuason of the motive for the attack.
The attack is one in a series of violent, unprovoked attacks on Asian Americans. Advocacy groups say that hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have risen sharply over the last year since the pandemic started, with many - including former President Donald Trump - putting the blame on China.
Six Asian women were killed during a shooting spree in Georgia last week.
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