Posted on June 3, 2022

‘I’m the Victim Here!’ Asian Man Beaten in NYC Subway Station Says He Never Touched Anyone

Shawn Cohen, Daily Mail, June 1, 2022

The Asian man who was brutally beaten in a New York City subway station Friday said the ultimate indignity came afterward when the attack was depicted as vigilante justice – after he was anonymously accused of attempting to molest a girl on the train.

‘I’m the victim here!’ the Asian man, a 42-year-old married father from Queens who asked not to be identified, told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview Tuesday. ‘I fell asleep on the train, and I woke up to a bunch of guys grabbing me and assaulting me.

‘I was targeted and held against my will, was put in a full nelson and assaulted by two different guys,’ he added. ‘I didn’t even know what the hell was going on. And there was a crowd watching and nobody was helping.’

A disturbing video, shared online over the weekend, shows him being restrained and pummeled by a group of men at the Fulton Street station in Manhattan on Friday afternoon.

The victim, who does plumbing and air conditioning work for a living, told DailyMail.com that he’d been drinking with a friend before falling asleep sitting up on the train.

He said he still has a throbbing headache, bruising to his head and a swollen jaw from the attack.

‘I can’t even open my mouth properly to eat food. I’ve got six bumps on my head,’ he said.

It was presented as a racist attack by some advocacy groups online because the victim is Vietnamese, during a time assaults on Asians have skyrocketed.

But the narrative shifted after the person who recorded the viral video described it as vigilante justice.

The videographer, who asked to remain anonymous, told the New York Post that he saw the Asian man being restrained and asked, ‘Why are you holding that guy?’

The holder said he’d pulled the ‘victim’ off onto the platform because he’d just tried to sexually assault a woman in a subway car. They were waiting for police to come arrest him, but officers didn’t arrive for almost 20 minutes, the man told the Post.

In video of the incident, a person can be heard shouting at the man: ‘You touching girls, you touching girls – little sisters and all that, moms and everything. You filthy, son.’

‘I got a daughter,’ another man could be heard saying before slapping the man. ‘If the cops lock me up, I’m paying my own bail.’

Police have released photos of the alleged attackers and are asking the public’s help in locating them. Police have received no reports of an alleged sexual assault, police sources told DailyMail.com Tuesday night.

However, the Queens man has seen his own criminal record go public, after the media reported on his extensive criminal history.

One outlet reported that he’d been arrested for sexual assault and forcible touching. However, an NYPD source told DailyMail.com that the victim has never been arrested for a sex crime.

‘You know, I’ve been arrested numerous amounts of times for assault, disorderly conduct, drinking in public, but never, ever, ever for forcibly touching a woman,’ the man told DailyMail.com. ‘I have never, ever forcibly touched any type of female or person or individual in my life.

‘I have family, a daughter in public school and a wife, and I have a mother and father,’ he continued. ‘I don’t want people to see me like I’m an animal, like I’m a savage. I’m not. I swear on everything I love that I did not do what people say I did. I didn’t touch nobody. I didn’t try to assault anybody.

‘I mean, what kind of man would do that? And if I did do that, where are the victims, the people I supposedly assaulted? Wouldn’t they be in that video too?’

‘Where are the victims,’ he asked. ‘I’m the victim, hello. Why I was targeted, whether they were trying to rob me, whether it’s a hate crime, I do not know.’

Original Article