They arrive on the heels of an alleged metro assault on Friday in which an eyewitness said the Asian victim was only hit for who he was.
One of Sunday’s alleged assaults made a 54-year-old woman go to the hospital, a police spokesman said. She was approached in the Lower East Side by a man who hit her in the face with a metal object, police said.
The 38-year-old Elias Guerrero has since been arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime, according to the NYPD spokesman. Guerrero has not been formally charged by the district attorney, and it is unclear whether prosecutors will file a hate crime charge.
In another incident, a woman allegedly grabbed a 41-year-old Asian woman from behind and threw her to the ground, shouting at her in Spanish, a police spokesman said.
Police arrested 37-year-old Patricia Melendez and charged her with assault, disorderly conduct and harassment. The NYPD spokesman said the incident was being investigated as a possible ‘prejudice’ crime.
It is unclear whether Guerrero or Melendez has a lawyer. CNN’s attempts to contact them or their families were unsuccessful.
The NYPD said it was investigating a third incident in which a 37-year-old woman was on her way to an anti-Asian violent protest when a man – who has not yet been identified – allegedly took her protest sign and : after trying to put it in a rubbish bin, throw it on the ground and step on it.
A NYPD release says the woman punched her twice in the face when the woman asked the man why he was doing it.
Metro attacks apparently included hate speech
The three incidents came after an assault on Friday in which a 68-year-old Asian man was hit in a subway, according to authorities.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the attacker punched the man hard enough that the victim lost consciousness and sustained a head injury that required medical treatment.
According to the NYPD, the victim remains in a critical but stable condition.
Marc Mathieu is facing charges of second-degree assault and was tried on Monday, according to the district attorney’s office. While Detective Hubert Reyes said Mathieu was tentatively charged with ‘assault as a hate crime’, prosecutors are still investigating whether the case is a hate crime, the district attorney’s office said.
CNN has contacted Mathieu’s lawyer James McQueeney for comment.
Witness George Okrepkie told CNN that he “still can’t get over it.”
“I’m a 9/11 survivor … I’ve been through hard times,” he said. “I’ve been working in the city for 30 years. I’ve seen people being robbed, beaten, but most of them are crimes of money (nature) or passion. This is the first time I’ve seen someone attack someone for whom they was. ‘
Witness terrified by attacks
Okrepkie said the victim, the attacker and he were the only persons in the subway. Okrepie was sitting across from the victim when the attacker came up with a rolled object, called the victim a ‘Chinese king’ and repeatedly hit him in the head, the witness said.
“I just paid attention to the gentleman, who was in a state of shock and, as it turns out, in his late 60s, but told me he was 170 years old,” Okrepkie said. “He did not know where he was, and I took off my scarf and made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.”
After looking at the man’s wounds, Okrepkie took the bloodied man before EMTs came to him.
“I took the two photos because it’s a current event right now and people do not seem to think how real it is,” he said. “These photos expressed exactly what was happening.”
Okrepkie said he later learned that the man was Sri Lankan, but regardless of the man’s specific ethnicity, he said it was a sad comment on a diaspora that he said was “part of what (New York City) is doing. ‘.
“I’m just scared that people on the fringe are just starting to act like an ordinary man walking down the street and saying things they don’t mention – ‘Kung Flu, Chinese virus,'” he said. (as a result).
“I’m scared,” Okrepkie said. “If I were Asian, I would be scared.”
Mayor condemns attacks on Asian Americans
Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference on Monday that there will still be a greater NYPD presence in Asian communities in the city.
De Blasio calls the incidents ‘unacceptable’ and he encourages New Yorkers to report them.
“The way to defeat hatred is to acknowledge it and report it,” de Blasio said.
Anti-Asian hate crimes more than doubled during the pandemic, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
The alleged incidents follow the shooting last week in the Atlanta area at three spas and salons. Eight people were killed, including six Asian American women.
CNN’s Laura Ly and Mirna Alsharif contributed to this report.