Chinese American Woman Attacked in Kew Gardens

**Please note a correction to this article. I’m not sure where my head was at as I wrote this on the subway, but I had June 11th as the assault date when it was in fact May 21st. Thanks Sarah Kim at Eyewitness News for catching that inconsistency.**

I suppose that it is time I speak about my wife’s assault. I was waiting to see how things played out before sharing this more detailed information publicly. But I don’t expect much more to happen, so here we go.

TLDR; This is a fairly long article, if you’d like a summary, some jerk punched my wife when she was walking our dog in broad daylight on Kew Gardens and he got away.

We’ve not heard back from any officers, the DA’s office, or any detectives for weeks now. So one can assume that this is a case that will likely not be resolved. In any case, let me tell you about it. 

My wife was walking our dog Peppa on Friday, May 21st 2021 between 10:30am and 11am. Around 10:45am while she was on Queens Boulevard between 82nd Ave and 82nd Road in Kew Gardens Queens, a light skin black male, weighing about 150 pounds, approximately 5’8” tall was on the street screaming and cursing.

For some reason, he set his sights on my wife and starts to scream and curse as her. Unfortunately, she cannot remember much of what he said. She was under this scaffolding illustrated here and was attempting to get away from him. We were asked if we thought this was a hate crime because of her race, and honestly, we cannot say what his motivation was. However, we do not rule this out as a possibility.

He then followed her and shoved her, she pushed him back and told him to get away from her. The man then proceeded to punch my wife on the right shoulder and then he kicked her on the right thigh.

 As he punched her, he repeated to her to “put the dog down.” I presume he wanted to hit her more, but possibly in his mind, hitting a cute dog is a no no. It’s okay to hit a small woman, but you can’t injure a dog. The guy has a moral compass of sorts? /sarcasm

In any case, my wife started to scream at this point and people heard her. When people started to show up the cowardly perpetrator fled towards the direction of the cemetery. My wife then noticed an officer across the street so she ran to him for help. He said that he was there for court and couldn’t help.  She then saw another officer driving by and tried to flag her down, she ignored her and kept going. Then she saw two of them smoking, they spoke to her, but didn’t really do anything either.

That’s when she realized the cops weren’t going to help and came upstairs and told me what happened. She had forgotten her phone so she couldn’t reach me sooner. I immediately threw on some pants and ran downstairs to see if I could find the person, but I could not. By then he was gone.

We spoke to a few people downstairs and we were told that the cops were notified, but we had no report number, no officer names, absolutely nothing to follow up on. We decided to call the police ourselves to get some sort of paper trail. We called and reported the assault, 8 hours later two officers showed up. I presume since there was no ongoing danger or threat, the call was not treated as a high priority. The officers came by and took some details. They provided a job number, but told us that without any video or pictures, the detectives wouldn’t be able to do much. So we didn’t file a proper report.

The next day, we were allowed to look at video footage from the construction site next door. We were able to acquire a photo of his back, but not his face or front. I also stopped by the DA’s office and spoke to a guard named David. He knew exactly the guy I was looking for. He said that he was causing a ruckus and cursing there too. But he told me that I couldn’t view their footage, but detectives could. 

Over the next day or so, I kept stewing about this occurrence. My wife was covered in bruises and I felt very angry about it. So I sent a few emails to our neighborhood outreach cops and made a follow up call to 911 cause I wanted to file a proper police report and I wanted the detectives looking for this criminal. 911 said to call the precinct and provide a report number. Hello, that is what I am trying to acquire as I mentioned at the start of our call.

I sent some emails and tweets to the DA’s office about the incident. Also, thanks to Nick at Eva’s I met a woman, Melissa, who works at the DA’s office. Eventually I got a call from a Lt. and provided him some details so he can check the video. They said they were looking into the footage, but as of yet, I’ve not heard back. 

In response to my emails the responding officers from before came back to our home and took more details and provided us a report number. Eventually, we were contacted by detectives, went down to the station, looked at some mug shots, provided our pictures, details and were told they’d look into it. We’ve not heard back since then. 

From the Lt’s side, we did receive a phone call from a victims support counselor. I asked for that, can’t hurt right? I didn’t speak to them, my wife did, but she didn’t feel like they were really helpful. Very nice, but not really useful. 

In any case, it’s been several weeks, my wife’s physical bruises are healing, but she’s still a bit scared and shook up. She no longer walks our dog alone on the weekends. I walk Peppa during the week and she joins us on the weekends. She’s now carrying a personal safety alarm. I don’t know how helpful strangers would be, but I figured it can’t hurt. Finally, she’s starting a “women empowered” program created by Eve and Rener Gracie. It’s geared towards self defense, but based on BJJ. It looks solid as you can see below.

NYC is a big city, a dangerous city. We are blessed and know that this could have been way worse than it was. Also, I’m grateful that this is the first time my wife has encountered any real violence in these mean streets. I mean, I once caught her in the projects blasting Air Supply’s “All out of Love” from a Ford Taurus. She’s not from the streets and isn’t accustomed to random acts of violence like some of us are. I’m grateful that she’s been fairly safe all things considered. But we are all taking steps to make sure she’s even safer. I’m also trying to raise awareness that this can happen anywhere, anytime. So be careful out there my friends.