Police are looking for a man who violently attacked a 65-year-old woman and made anti-Asian statements toward her.
It happened around 11:40 a.m. Monday on 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues.
Surveillance video released by the NYPD shows the victim was walking when a man came up to her and kicked her in the stomach, knocking her to the ground.
The man then stomped on the woman's face several times while hurling anti-Asian sentiments at her, police said. He later casually walked away, the footage shows.
The victim was hospitalized with serious injuries. No arrests have been made.
The NYPD says its hate crimes task force is investigating the attack and has asked anyone with information to contact the department.
Warning, graphic video: another angle of a 65-year-old Asian woman being brutally attacked on W 43rd st yesterday... police still looking for the attacker. The people who work in the building and did nothing to help her have been suspended. @NY1 pic.twitter.com/zrT4FICM7I
— Lindsay Tuchman (@LindsayTuchman) March 30, 2021
According to footage of the assault, two people who appeared to be security guards walked into the frame and one of them closed the building door as the woman was on the ground.
The property developer and manager of the building, Brodsky Organization, wrote on Instagram that it was aware of the assault and said staff members who witnessed it were suspended pending an investigation.
The head of the union representing building workers disputed allegations that the door staff failed to act. He said the union has information that they called for help immediately.
"Our union is working to get further details for a more complete account, and urges the public to avoid a rush to judgment while the facts are determined,'' SEIU 32BJ President Kyle Bragg said in a written statement. He condemned the attack as "yet another example of the unbridled hate and terror" against Asian-Americans.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea called Monday's attack "disgusting" in an interview with Pat Kiernan on NY1.
"I don't know who attacks a 65-year-old woman and leaves her on the street like that," Shea said.
Shea said the agency has increased patrols in predominantly Asian communities amid a national spike in anti-Asian hate crimes.
The attack comes just weeks after a mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent. The NYPD says there have been 33 hate crimes with an Asian victim so far this year, news outlets reported.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the video "absolutely disgusting and outrageous'' and said it was "absolutely unacceptable'' that witnesses did not intervene.
"I don't care who you are, I don't care what you do, you've got to help your fellow New Yorker,'' de Blasio said Tuesday at his daily news briefing.
"If you see someone being attacked, do whatever you can," he said. "Make noise. Call out what's happening. Go and try and help. Immediately call for help. Call 911. This is something where we all have to be part of the solution. We can't just stand back and watch a heinous act happening.''
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the attack "horrifying and repugnant." He ordered the state police's Hate Crimes Task Force to offer its assistance to the NYPD.
According to a report from Stop AAPI Hate over 3,795 incidents were reported to the organization from March 19, 2020, to February 28, 2021. The organization said that number is "only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur.''