Stunning incident at New York City hospital: Wheelchair-bound man spit at and harassed

By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent

A disturbing video circulating on social media shows an Asian man in a wheelchair being verbally harassed and spit on in a hospital hallway.

AsAmNews first came across the video posted by Asian Dawn on Facebook. The profanity-laced video may offend many.

“F*ck you, f*ck you too, mother f*cker, I’m going to knock your ass out,” a voice can be heard saying off camera. “You p*ssy, I’m going to knock your ass out,” the man said, apparently directing his threat to the unidentified Asian man in the wheelchair.

That man pushes his wheel chair forward. His words are unintelligible, but clearly angry. Despite being wheelchair-bound, he refuses to back down or to be intimidated.

“What!” the attacker responds before spitting several times at the other in the wheelchair.

The incident occurs in front of a hospital reception desk. A staff person can be seen briefly in the background. It’s not clear how she responded or if she intervened.

AsAmNews reached out to Asian Dawn who says he originally saw the video posted by social media activist @Jackfroot who has 47,000 Instagram followers.

@Jackfroot tells AsAmNews he’s been contacted by an employee at Coler who told him the incident occurred at NYC HHC Coler, a short-term rehabilitation and long-term skilled nursing facility.

The hospital is run by New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, also known as NYC Health + Hospitals.

AsAmNews contacted HHC Coler and at least three times over four days the facility promised it would get back to us with a response to our inquiry. Twice today we informed Coler a story would be published tonight.

“We’ll get you something. Thank you for your patience,” pledged Christopher Miller of Coler’s Press Office.

That was the last we heard from him. Our questions went unanswered through our 8:30 pm Eastern Time deadline.

Minutes after AsAmNews published this story, Miller sent us the following statement.

“At NYC Health + Hospitals there is zero tolerance for any bias at any of our facilities. We are looking into this incident.”

The hospital has a policy of implementing any action it feels might be necessary.

The statement from Coler failed to answer the questions we sent them on two different occasions.

We wanted to know what the facility knew about the incident, when did it take place, if any disciplinary action was taken and what, if anything, did the employee do to stop it.

This is the latest in a long line of incidents nationwide when an Asian American has been spit at, harassed or physically attacked since the coronravirus pandemic. While there is no direct evidence at this time this is related to COVID-19, does it really matter? It’s unacceptable for any human being to have to endure that sort of treatment-especially at a public facility.

We will update this story as new information becomes available. If you have any information about this, you may contact us at info at AsAmNews dot com.

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