NEW YORK (AP) — A man has been arrested in a brutal assault on a Chinese immigrant man who was kicked repeatedly in the head in East Harlem.
Police said Jarrod Powell has been charged with two counts of felony assault in Friday's attack on 61-year-old Yao Pan Ma.
It's not clear if the 49-year-old Powell has an attorney who can comment on the charges.
Ma was collecting cans when he was attacked from behind, knocked to the ground, and kicked in the head.
Surveillance video shared by the NYPD allegedly showed Powell repeatedly stomping on the man’s head.
Click here to view the surveillance video. Warning, the video contains graphic images that may be difficult to watch.
He was taken to Harlem Hospital.
Officials say he remains in a coma there Tuesday.
The attack on Ma is just the latest in a line of violence against AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) people in New York in recent weeks.
In late March from a midtown Manhattan apartment building, surveillance camera footage captured the brutal attack of an Asian woman as she walked to church.
38-year-old Brandon Elliot was arrested in connection to that case a few days later. Elliot was reportedly on lifetime parole after being released from prison in 2019 after being convicted in 2002 of fatally stabbing his mother.
The building's management company later fired some of the security employees involved in the incident.
A day after that incident, the NYPD said a suspect yelled anti-Asian slurs at a 44-year-old woman and her three children, spat at her, and kicked her cellphone off a subway train.
The rise in hate incidents has caused the NYPD to take drastic measures, including undercover police officers being stationed in neighborhoods where Asian Americans live.
Earlier this month, an undercover officer arrested a suspect who yelled a slur at him.
