Police in San Diego announced they’ve launched a hate crime investigation into an assault on an 81-year-old Asian American man.
His brother-in-law told CBS8 that a man came up to Mark Sonouvong during his morning walk, asked him about his race, then knocked him to the ground and beat him up.
“Some fellow came up and asked, ‘are you Chinese or Vietnamese?’ and my brother-in-law said leave me alone,” said Dennis Lambert.
Speaking on KUSI’s Good Morning San Diego, JoAnn Fields of API Initiative called for immediate action to stop these attacks.
“What we are proposing is to create a rapid response action plan so that we can better educate our community on awareness. We believe all of San Diego wants to be safe. We need to work together to provide resources and data so when we see an uptick in a certain area of the community, we can flood that neighborhood with information and resources.”
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Sonouvong is recovering at Scripps Mercy Hospital. Lambert described himself as in shock after seeing him.
“It upsets me that this is going on in this country about this Asian hate business,” he said.
According to Fields, this is the third attack on an elderly Asian victim in the San Diego area.
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