Oakland police have arrested a man suspected of assaulting three people in a series of shameless attacks that put the city of Chinatown on the line.
Alameda County District Attorney’s Office on Monday charged Yahya Muslim, 28, with assault, ill-treatment of older men and special allegations that they caused serious bodily injury and committed a crime while being released pending the resolution of another case, according to the court records.
One of the attacks was captured on video. A 91-year-old man was walking on a sidewalk in the 800 block of Harrison Street on Jan. 31 when a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt slid him from behind and hit the ground. The man cut, bruised and sustained an injury to his thumb, according to a police report.
Muslim later assaulted a couple on the same block, police report reads. According to the report, the woman partially lost consciousness and sustained a deep cut to her chin. The next day, February 1, Muslims again attacked people in Harrison Street and placed them in a “psychiatric room,” the report said.
The attacks unnerved the Chinatown of Oakland and provoked outrage far above it. While a video of the attack on the 91-year-old man was circulated on social media, several actors, Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu, offered a $ 25,000 reward for information that led to the arrest of the suspect.
“The number of hate crimes against Asian Americans continues to rise, despite our repeated pleas for help,” Kim wrote on Instagram.
At a news conference last week, Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, called for the city to bring back foot patrols, especially during the New Year holidays, and install more police cameras. The assaults sparked a debate over how to allocate police resources in Oakland, which, like many cities in the U.S., receives calls to reduce its uniform presence and divert funding from its police force to other city programs.
After police distributed images and videos of the assaults in Chinatown, several people came forward and identified the suspect as Muslim. The witnesses “knew and recognized him,” said Officer Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department. Muslim was detained on an unrelated warrant and was in jail when he was identified as the suspect in the assaults in Chinatown, Watson said.
It could not be determined Monday night whether Muslim has a lawyer who can speak on his behalf.
Muslim, who referred to his profession as a ‘courtesy clerk’ when he was discussed in Santa Rita prison, was previously convicted of assault in the Alameda High Court in 2015 and 2020, according to the court report. He has not yet been sentenced for the 2020 conviction when he allegedly committed the assaults in Chinatown, prompting Alameda province prosecutors to file a special allegation that Muslim will extend his sentence if convicted again. be found, if proved.
Times author Jennifer Lu contributed to this report.