A Sri Lankan immigrant who was assaulted on a Manhattan train last week was the victim of an anti-Asian attack, an eyewitness told The Post on Sunday.
Sculptor George Okrepkie, 56, said he was sitting across from 68-year-old victim Narayange Bodhi on Friday afternoon when a fedora-wearing man approached the older rider and said, “You mother-king Asian!” and punched him.
“The man was suddenly just on top of the elderly man who made a stabbing motion and just hit him over the head,” Okrepkie said. ‘Within seconds there was blood all over the place [victim].
“The attacker jumped off the man. I tried to grab [the attacker]. I could not. The doors are already open, and he is riding outside the train. I focused my attention on the victim and made a tournament for him to prevent the blood from coming out of his head, “said Okrepkie – who used his new Burberry scarf to relieve the bleeding.
The attacker escaped when the train stopped at Franklin Street station, the witness said.
Okrepkie captured Bodhi’s bloodied face in a photo that has since gone viral.
“I took a picture just because I wanted to make sure we remember what was really happening,” he said of the attack and others against Asian Americans. ‘These are not people who are stumbled or pushed or not [receiving] racial barriers – people are dramatically injured. ”
An NYPD spokesman told The Post on Sunday that the department had no evidence that the attack was racially motivated.
But Okrepkie, who said he stayed with the victim for 15 minutes until EMTs and police showed up, told The Post: ‘I do not know what you have to do to call it a hate crime.
‘I think the Asians are coming soon after, and they’re such a big part of our city. This is a large group of people. They are Vietnamese, they are Chinese, they come from Korea, Japan. It [attacker] does not care where the guy comes from. [The victim] just looked Asian. ”
New York City is experiencing an increase in attacks on people of Asian descent. Last year, there were 28 such racially motivated attacks compared to just two in 2019.
Bodhi could not be reached for comment by The Post.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore