‘When I go out, I’m afraid of people attacking me,’ says victim in Bronx anti-Chinese coronavirus assault

Anna Ng, 51.

A teenager ranting about the coronavirus while bashing a Chinese woman’s head with an umbrella had murder in her heart, the terrified victim told the Daily News Monday.

Anna Ng, 51, of the Bronx, said she needed four stitches March 28 to close the gash on her head after a racist attack that left her fearful she or her children could be targeted again.

"She meant to kill me. She wanted to hurt me,” Ng said of the umbrella-wielding bigot.

Ng, a stay-at-home mother of three who was born in China but raised in New York, is one of 11 Asian victims targeted in coronavirus-related hate crimes this year.

She had just come out of a BJ’s Wholesale Club in the Bronx, and was waiting for a Bx13 bus when four teenage girls came out of the store and confronted her. One of them held a cake she’d brought from inside the store, while the other three kept asking her if she was Chinese.

"I said yes,” Ng said. “They kept calling me a ‘Chinese coronavirus.’”

A surveillance image shows a young woman wearing a pink headband and black jacket, leaning over a bar on the bus to attack the victim. Police ask anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.(NYPD/DCPI)

Offended, Ng said she uttered “b---” in response, but didn’t confront them further, then sat in one of the front seats when the bus arrived.

The teens piled into the back of the bus; one kept yelling the same slur at her, she said.

When the teenagers got off the bus at 166th St., near Ogden Ave., one struck her again with an umbrella, ripping flesh and drawing a gush of blood, she said. The others took photos.

“They kept calling me ‘coronavirus’ after they cracked my head open,” she said, holding back tears. “After she got off and she hit me, she was still calling me names.”

Police arrested three 15-year-old girls near the scene, charging them with hate crime assaults, menacing and harassment. A fourth remained at large; police released a photo of the young attacker Sunday.

A surveillance image shows a young woman wearing a pink headband and black jacket, leaning over a bar on the bus to attack the victim. Police ask anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

Ng, who is disabled and cannot read or write, said she still has headaches from the vicious attack. Normally, she said, her daughter goes out shopping with her, but that day, she went alone.

“She would have freaked out,” Ng said.

She’s never been the victim of a hate crime before, she said.

“All my friends are black, Spanish, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Arabic, whatever,” Ng said. “This was my first time.”

From Jan. 1 to April 5, 2019, the NYPD reported three anti-Asian hate crimes.

So far this year, the police has seen 23 hate crimes where the suspect was motivated by more than one bias —a 360 % increase from last year. In 11 of those 23 cases, the victims were targeted because they were Asian and the suspect was motivated by the coronavirus, cops said. Police have made arrests in seven of those incidents.

Nationwide, more than 1,100 Asian Americans have been targeted in a variety of coronavirus-related discrimination incidents since March 17, according to data collected by the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council.

More than two-thirds of the victims targeted between March 17 -25 said they were verbally harassed, and one in 10 said they were physically assaulted.

Ng said she’s scared she could be attacked again, and her children share that fear.

“When I go out, I’m afraid of people attacking me,” Ng said. “My children won’t go out now. After what happened, they would not go out.”