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Man Follows, Racially Harasses NYC Photographer and ‘No One Stepped in to Help’

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    A man was caught on video verbally attacking an Asian woman with racist “dog-eating” questions while she documented a series of manhole explosions in New York City. 

    Ming, one half of the New York-based photographer duo The Bing Buzz, was walking in Astoria, Queens on Feb. 9 when she suddenly heard a boom, according to the pair’s YouTube video posted on Feb. 11.

    She immediately took out her phone and opened the Citizen app to document two explosions.

    After the second explosion, firefighters began evacuating people from the nearby buildings due to potentially high carbon monoxide levels. As Ming started to leave the area, a man approached her.

    Screenshot via The Bing Buzz

    “Then suddenly, this random guy comes up to me out of nowhere, with no mask covering his mouth, repeatedly asking me, ‘Yo why do Chinese people eat dogs?’ and aggressively following me around,” Ming said in the video.

    She then mentioned that the incident occurred at Broadway station above 31st Street on Broadway in Astoria.

    “That meant that he just targeted me as he was walking down the staircase,” she added. “There’s a huge spike in anti-Asian hate crimes nowadays, and there needs to be more awareness surrounding this issue.”

    Screenshot via The Bing Buzz

    The man continued to follow Ming, as seen in The Bing Buzz’s video.

    “What’s also crazy is that there were so many people standing around watching… no one stepped in to help, even though they saw that I was running up and down the block and around them, trying to dodge the guy from coming at me and continuing to harass me,” she said. “Anti-Asian hate crimes and harassments like this need to be stopped. There’s such a lack of media coverage on this and we are scared.”

    The Bing Buzz hopes the videos they posted, which are different from the ones they usually upload, will help raise awareness on the increase of violent attacks against Asian Americans.

    Do you have a hate incident to report? Help us document the recent rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans by going to STOP AAPI HATE to report an incident. Please stay safe out there.

    Feature Image via The Bing Buzz

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